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Image via BeatsPerMinute
Every year, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) releases a recap of the music industry’s sales. The graphs were pretty apocalyptic for a while, but 2014 marks the fourth straight year that the (U.S.) industry has stayed relatively stable.
Physical sales continue their inevitable decline towards irrelevancy, falling to 32% of 2014 revenues. More interesting is the battle between digital downloads and streaming services: downloads still hold a significant 36%-27% edge, but the number of streaming subscriptions jumped again, growing 26% to 7.7 million total subscribers.
Vinyl, meanwhile, continued it’s resurgence with $315 million in sales—up 49% from the previous year.
In short, streaming is continuing to make gains against digital download services, vinyl is a growing but minuscule piece of the pie, and musicians are still getting shorted. You can see the full report here.
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