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CD sales rose for the first time in 17 years
The music industry made almost as much from CDs as digital downloads in 2021.
Kris Holt03.14.2022
RIAA goes after NFT music website HitPiece
It wants to know how much it earned from the NFTs it sold.
Mariella Moon02.05.2022
Twitch warns creators after receiving 1,000 DMCA claims from record labels
Twitch's copyright problem won't go away.
Igor Bonifacic05.28.2021
Streaming music made up 83 percent of the record industry's revenue in 2020
According to the RIAA’s annual year-end report, overall recorded music revenue increased by 9.2 percent to $12.2 billion in 2020.
Igor Bonifacic02.26.2021
GitHub revamps copyright takedown policy after restoring YouTube-dl
GitHub has reinstated YouTube-dl after it took down the tool last month.
Igor Bonifacic11.16.2020
Twitch faces music industry backlash over proper licensing (updated)
The RIAA and other music industry groups have written a letter to Twitch complaining that the service isn't licensing their songs.
Jon Fingas10.26.2020
Streaming represented nearly 80 percent of US music revenue in 2019
Streaming is even more vital to the music industry than it was a year ago. The RIAA has reported that streaming represented 79 percent ($8.8 billion) of American music revenue in 2019, compared to 75 percent the year before. And crucially, more of those were paid subscribers. There were 60.4 million paying customers for services like Apple Music and Spotify, representing 61 percent ($6.8 billion) of the entire industry's revenue -- a big step up from 46.9 million subscribers and 55 percent in 2018.
Jon Fingas02.26.2020
Streaming dominates the music industry's revenue
The music industry is on the upswing, and the RIAA has services like Spotify and Apple Music to thank. Adoption has steadily increased, and they accounted for 80 percent of the revenue from the first half of 2019. Despite these record-breaking numbers, the artists who actually create and perform the music aren't reaping much benefit.
Marc DeAngelis09.06.2019
RIAA reports music streaming pulled in $7.4 billion last year
For the third year in a row, the RIAA's annual report (PDF) shows recorded music revenue growing rapidly, shooting up 11.9 percent from 2017 for a total of $9.8 billion. Just as we saw over the last few years, the reason for that growth came from one area: streaming. Whether it's from paid subscriptions, ad-supported services or digital radio types, the $7.4 billion haul from streaming contributed 75 percent of revenue for the year, matching the RIAA's mid-2018 stat.
Richard Lawler03.01.2019
Streaming accounts for 75 percent of music industry revenue in the US
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has released music industry revenue statistics for the first half of 2018 in the US, and on average, revenue growth has slowed. While overall revenue was up 10 percent compared to the same time last year, clocking in at $4.6 billion, that rate is only around half of the increase observed between the first halves of 2016 and 2017. Streaming revenue growth slowed as well, though it was still up 28 percent compared to last year. Notably, streaming accounted for the vast majority of revenue so far this year, with 75 percent of overall revenue coming from streaming services like Spotify, Apple Music and Tidal.
Mallory Locklear09.21.2018
CDs and vinyl are outselling digital music downloads
Digital music downloads began to outsell physical media since 2012. It took four more years for digital music revenue to surpass those from physical media as well. Then streaming happened, and last year generated more money in the US than all the other formats. Now, digital downloads are coming in dead last, with fewer sales than CDs, vinyl or other physical media, according to the latest annual report from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
Rob LeFebvre03.22.2018
US music sales keep climbing thanks to streaming
Last year, streaming generated more money in the US for the music business than all other forms of distribution for the first time ever, and that trend is continuing in spades. In the first half of 2017, the industry raked in just under $4 billion, up 17 percent over the same period last year, with 62 percent of that coming from streaming. If the trend continues, the industry should easily surpass the $7.7 billion it earned in 2016, which was already the best year for music since 2009.
Steve Dent09.21.2017
Owner of YouTube ripping site settles lawsuit with record labels
Last year, record labels took the popular YouTube-ripping site YouTube-mp3.org to court seeking the pirating website's permanent shutdown and $150,000 per violation. Well, the labels, helmed by the RIAA, have, as of today, won with recent court filings pointing towards a settlement between the two parties.
Mallory Locklear09.04.2017
Kanye West album is the first to go platinum from streaming alone
Kanye West's The Life of Pablo may have had excessive hype between the initial Tidal exclusive, the expansion to other services and the changing tracklist, but it's definitely a commercial success. The RIAA has confirmed to Engadget that Pablo was recently certified platinum, making it the first-ever album to get the honor based solely on listens through streaming-only services. While it's not exclusively a streaming album (Kanye sells it as a download on his site), its 1.5 billion US streams were enough to achieve platinum status by themselves. Downloads represented less than 0.1 percent of Pablo's performance back in May 2016, and it's safe to say they didn't climb higher without availability in iTunes and other download stores.
Jon Fingas04.04.2017
Streaming made last year the music industry's best since 2009
When the RIAA released its annual report last year tracking sales in 2015, it came with a significant milestone: streaming revenue had surpassed that of downloads, if only by less than a percent. But the subscription-based model continues to grow -- and make history. As the agency's newest report notes, retail revenue in 2016 grew to $7.7 billion, making it the best year for the music industry since 2009. And streaming services accounted for 51 percent of music money made in the US.
David Lumb03.30.2017
US internet providers stop sending piracy warnings
Remember the media industry's vaunted Copyright Alert System? It was supposed to spook pirates by having their internet providers send violation notices, with the threat of penalties like throttling. However, it hasn't exactly panned out. ISPs and media groups have dropped the alert system with an admission that it isn't up to the job. While the program was supposedly successful in "educating" the public on legal music and video options, the MPAA states that it just couldn't handle the "hard-core repeat infringer problem" -- there wasn't much to deter bootleggers.
Jon Fingas01.28.2017
Recording industry writes Trump on the eve of tech CEO visit
According to multiple reports, on Wednesday a number of high-profile tech execs will visit President-elect Donald Trump. The list includes Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, Tim Cook, Sheryl Sandberg, Jeff Bezos, Brian Krzanich and a number of others. Before that meeting goes down, however, the "music community" consisting of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and friends decided this was the time to speak up. In a letter (PDF) to Trump, the industry made its case for how valuable music is, and how that value (for their member companies) is being siphoned away by tech companies that don't do enough to make sure every note is paid for.
Richard Lawler12.14.2016
Pirates swamp online stores with counterfeit music CDs
It can be easy to forget that CDs still represent a significant chunk of the music industry's revenue in the streaming era, but pirates certainly haven't forgotten. The Wall Street Journal has learned that counterfeit CDs are a serious problem at Amazon and other online stores. Bootleggers (frequently from China) produce discs that are increasingly similar to the real deal and sell them for slightly less than legitimate copies, making them look like bargains instead of obvious frauds. And they aren't always coming from obscure suppliers, either. In an RIAA investigation, Amazon fulfilled 18 out of 44 CD orders identified as counterfeit.
Jon Fingas10.31.2016
Music industry pushes for digital copyright law reform
Think the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is broken, leading to all kinds of abuse? So does the American music industry... just not for the same reasons. The RIAA and other groups have responded to a US Copyright Office request for comment on the DMCA by calling for broad reforms of the "harmful" and "obsolete" law. They argue that the takedown notice approach doesn't work well given the sheer glut of pirated material -- all it takes is a slightly different web address to make that bootleg song available once again. They also claim that safe harbor provisions are too kind, letting some sites profit from piracy that they know is taking place.
Jon Fingas04.03.2016
Streaming is now the US music industry's biggest money maker
It may have just been a matter of time, but it finally happened: streaming music is now the biggest cash cow for the American music industry. The RIAA's latest year-end sales report reveals that streaming accounted for 34.3 percent of US music revenue in 2015, barely edging past the 34 percent of downloads. Physical sales, meanwhile, were down to 28.8 percent. And despite concerns about free listening hurting the bottom line, paid subscriptions were the star of the show. While ad-based streaming pulled in 30.6 percent more cash versus 2014, paid subscriptions jumped 52.3 percent -- suddenly, forking over $10 a month for unlimited music wasn't such a far-fetched idea.
Jon Fingas03.22.2016