Vinyl Sales Continue to Grow, Streaming Dominates Music Industry in 2019

Vinyl Bay 777, Long Island’s music outlet, takes a brief look at the RIAA, Nielsen and BuzzAngle’s Year-End numbers

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has released their 2019 year-end report Tuesday. With Nielsen Music and BuzzAngle’s reports having come in January, we now have a more complete idea of what the music industry’s revenue and cultural trends were over the last year. A year of growth for the industry, streaming dominated the field while vinyl continued its rapid rise in the physical sales space.

In 2019, the music industry saw its fourth straight year of double-digit growth, taking in more than $11.1 billion in revenue, a 13% increase over 2018’s $9.8 billion.

Streaming was the biggest part of the revenue equation in 2019. Jumping nearly 20% over 2018’s numbers, the format ended the year with more than $8.8 billion in revenue. That means streaming now makes up 79.5% of all revenue brought in by the music industry. It also means, according to Billboard’s reporting, that streaming’s revenue exceeded the music industry’s yearly earnings for every year between 2008 and 2017. Much of that came from paid subscription services (Apple Music, Spotify’s paid tier), which grew by another 25% this year.

While streaming was popular in the US, video was an even more lucrative venture in the rest of the world. According to both Nielsen and BuzzAngle, YouTube outpaced paid services like Spotify and Amazon Music, especially when it came to genres like K-pop and Bollywood.

As for traditional sales, the numbers stayed relatively steady. While there was a dip, the RIAA reports it was only 0.6% over 2018, making up $1.15 billion of the year’s revenue. While CD sales once again dropped, this time 12%, they still made up the bulk of physical sales at $615 million. Vinyl continued to gain on CDs, though, rising 19% to take in $504 million in 2019, the only physical format to experience any gain. That’s the 14^th straight year of growth for the vinyl medium and puts it squarely in striking distance to potentially take over that dominating sales spot from CDs.

Digital sales took a nosedive, however. Following a trend that has been occurring for a few years now, digital single and album sales dropped 18%, taking in $856 million in 2019, the first time that number has dropped below $1 billion since 2006.

In total, digital (streaming and sales) made up 87.2% of the music industry’s 2019 revenue, physical sales made up 10.3% and synch royalties (radio) made up 2.5%.

According to Nielsen, Post Malone, Drake, Billie Eilish, Taylor Swift and Ariana Grande were the year’s top-selling artists. Post Malone’s ‘Hollywood’s Bleeding’ took the top album spot (including track-equivalent albums and streaming-equivalent albums), however Taylor Swift’s ‘Lover’ topped total album sales, digital album sales and physical album sales for 2019. Vinyl sales continued to trend towards catalog album popularity with the Beatles’ ‘Abbey Road’ topping the list. Billie Eilish’s ‘When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go,’ is the only current album in the vinyl top 10, coming in a number 2. Digital belonged to Lil Nas X’s single “Old Town Road” for both sales and on-demand streaming.

In terms of genre statistics, R&B and hip-hop were the most consumed overall. However, when it came to physical album and digital album and song sales, rock came out ahead.

The music industry experienced a lot of growth in 2019. Music consumption grew along with the increasing popularity of streaming. While sales have decreased again, especially in digital, vinyl continues to be a bright spot, gaining year-over-year for a 14-year high. These numbers point to a lot of change in the way we consume musical media and what we can expect to see in the future.

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Get your physical music fix at Vinyl Bay 777. As one of Long Island’s top independent record shops, we have thousands of titles to choose from in a variety of genres to suit the tastes of most music fans. Browse our wide selection of new and used vinyl records, CDs, cassettes, music DVDs, memorabilia and more in store at our Plainview location or online at vinylbay777.com. With more titles being added to our selection all the time, you never know what gems you might find at Vinyl Bay 777.