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.

Sadness in Pop Music Vs. Popularity

Vinyl Bay 777, Long Island’s music outlet, takes a brief look at a new study that compares music trends in song positivity

Sometimes trends don’t equal popularity.

A group of researchers at the University of California at Irvine recently published a study about trends in music popularity. Sampling 500,000 songs released between 1985 and 2015 in the UK, the study looked at what factors go into a song becoming popular and how that has changed over the last 30 years. One of their conclusions, albeit a very small one, is that popular songs have gradually lost their positivity.

In researching the different moods of songs, researchers found that over the last 30 years there has been a decline in happiness and positivity and a slight increase in sadness and negativity. This change was visible in the songwriting, in particular the acoustics of the song and its lyrical composition. Here, they cite a recent tendency among artists towards writing in the first person (a lot more use of the personal pronoun “I”) and the use of what they term more “anti-social” words (such as “kill”). The study correlates this finding with another study that found an increase in loneliness and social isolation culturally over the last couple of decades.

Previous studies have come up with a similar conclusion. Back in 2012, a study found that over the last 50 years, more songs were being written in a minor key. From the late 1960s to the late 2000s, the number of major key songs on the charts fell by nearly 50 percent. It also reported that there was an overall decrease in the average tempo of popular songs, dropping from an average of around 116 beats per minute in the 1960s to about 100 beats per minute in the 2000s. The study found this in major key songs as well, leading them to the conclusion that popular music was becoming “emotionally ambiguous.”

However, while the trend exists, it does not seem to have much effect on the popularity of a song. In actuality, the study found the opposite to be true. Positive music and songs that are more “danceable” are more popular than those that aren’t. Such could be a possible reason for the recent increase in the popularity of dance music and dance-based pop over rock, which the study found to have decreased in popularity.

Over the last three decades, research has found that music in general has grown “sadder.” Cultural shifts that impact lyrics and a shift towards minor keys and slower tempos have played a role in this change. While sadness is a growing trend though, it is not one that has equated to more popularity for songs. With the increased presence of upbeat dance music on the charts, people aren’t necessarily gravitating towards sad music. And although the study tries to predict what songs will become popular, trends don’t always equal popularity.

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Find music for whatever mood you’re in at Vinyl Bay 777. Long Island’s favorite new independent record shop has thousands of titles to choose from in a variety of genres to suit most music lovers. Browse our wide selection of new and used vinyl records, CDs, cassettes, music DVDs, memorabilia and more in store at our Plainview location or shop 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.