RIAA Mid-Year Report Shows Streaming Growth

The RIAA today (Sept. 25) released its mid-year 2014 shipment and revenue numbers.
For the first half of 2014, overall revenues were down 2.5%, to $2.2 billion at wholesale value on a year-over-year basis. At retail, the decrease in value was 4.9% to $3.2 billion.
Strong growth in revenues from streaming services offset declines in digital downloads. Streaming music services grew 28% in the first half of 2014 to $859 million, versus $673 million for 1H 2013. This category includes revenues from subscription services (such as Rhapsody and paid versions of Spotify, among others), streaming radio service revenues that are distributed by SoundExchange (like Pandora, SiriusXM, and other Internet radio), and other non-subscription on-demand streaming services (such as YouTube, Vevo, and ad-supported Spotify).
These streaming services contributed 27% of total industry revenues in 1H 2014, compared with 20% for 1H 2013.
Paid subscriptions grew to $371 million, up 23% y-o-y on a value basis, but grew at an even more rapid pace of 43% by number of subscriptions. This difference is partially due to an update in RIAA’s retail price markup estimate.
On-demand ad-supported streaming services grew 57% y-o-y to $165 million for the first half of 2014.
The total value of digitally distributed formats was $2.2 billion, virtually flat compared to the 1H of 2013.
Revenues from permanent digital downloads (including albums, single tracks, videos, and kiosk sales) declined 12% to $1.3 billion for the first half of 2014.
Total sales in physical formats were $898 million, down 14% versus 1H 2013.