The growth of streaming services contributed to music revenue rebounding in 2016 but are consumers ready to pay for music again?
The year 2016 may be remembered as the year streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music stopped the hemorrhaging of music sales revenue.
According to the RIAA, the first half of 2016 saw music revenue from digital downloads overtaken by streaming services by a wide margin for the first time, and Canadian data saw similar trends with total aggregate streams of music in Canada, including from ad-supported sites like YouTube and subscription services like Spotify, grew to 34 billion from 26 billion in 2015.
During the same period, overall sales of digital and physical albums were down 21% from around $24 million in 2015 to $19 million in 2016 year-to-date, according to Paul Shaver of Nielson Music Canada, which tracks consumer behaviour.
“It’s definitely growing for all involved for sure, as we see the increases going up year-over-year, it has to be increasing for everybody,” said Shaver. “There’s still a value gap, unfortunately, from the traditional model of a physical CD that you hold or something you download.”
The growth in streaming services has largely being credited for the last two years of music revenue growth in the U.S. and Canada following a dismal year in music sales in 2014.
But the change to streaming service revenue hasn’t been without controversy. The low royalty rates paid to artists has been decried by some. The rates they are paid are often determined by music labels, which have their own contracts with streaming services.
But some local artists see the growth in streaming music as a largely positive development.
For Nat Jay, a Vancouver-based singer-songwriter, album sales revenues have remained largely unchanged with the rise of streaming services.
“I think that it’s helpful actually for a lot of musicians. For a while, people weren’t buying music at all. They were just illegally downloading.”
Zachary Gray, the singer and guitarist of the Vancouver-based indie-pop band the Zolas, whose third album Swooner was released last March, said that earning revenue from album sales remains daunting.
“I think we’ll look back at this era as a lost decade,” he said, referring to the challenges of making a living as a recording artist.
But, as a music fan, Gray can’t deny the appeal of having ready access to millions of tracks on his smartphone.
“Even though this is an ugly time to be a musician, it’s also the most exciting time,” he said.
Is subscription music streaming is helping the industry or do you think they are underpaying the artists.
Good morning (he said just before going out). A few errands. Bicycle. That kind of thing.
Good morning!
Good article Garf, and hopefully it’s the case that music streaming is starting to make money, still the artists are getting stiffed, but maybe not making a lot of money and good music go hand-in-hand, I don’t know. I would say that most should be doing it because they love it anyways.
BTW – third paragraph: “saw music revenue from digital downloads overtake streaming services by a wide margin for the first time”, should this be the other way around? I.e. Streaming services overtake digital downloads?
Good morning! Great article Garfield!
Good morning all. I kicked off my day by attempting to water my Christmas tree by pouring a good half litre of water into the tree skirt. How is everyone else’s day going so far?
@Wynnzie, thanks for the correction, I had them in the other order to start with but decided to switch them around but forgot to correct the wording in the rush to post before the (self imposed) deadline of 8am EST
@Garf no problem.
Good morning everyone!
Hi Justin, nice lights 🙂
What would people like to see on here next week?
Should we have an album of the year list?
Should we talk about Zuniors Boxing Day sale?
Hello All!
Well done Garf! I like both those ideas. Where do you plan on getting your stats from for album of the year? I was thinking of a top 100 playlist for the end of the month but came to the conclusion it will be my personal top 100 unless I find some time to do some research.
My original plan was to ask you kind folks for your own personal top 10 Canadian albums of the year so that I could take that data and create a top 10, or possibly top 20, for the site.
So Mondays post can be about the Zunior sale and Wednesday can be the best Albums?
It will be a small sample but that works.
I love the idea of an album of the year list! I’m terrible at keeping track of what came out when, but love year end lists of these kinds of things.
If anyone has an end of year top 10 Canadian album list could you email it to ourbasementblog@gmail.com please and I will compile an overall list for the 28th
I will also post this via twitter and the book of faces
and I haven’t been listening to a ton of Canadian stuff this year, or at least I haven’t paid much attention to whether it’s Canadian or not. The only 2 I can think of are the last Michael Bernard Fitzgerald album and the last Leeroy Stagger album, both of which were pretty great
@krib, feel free to send me your top 10 albums of the year and I will use the ones I can
Do they have to be released in 2016?
yes please
if I can sort out which ones are actually from 2016, sure.
Good morning. Sadly, I acquired no Canadian albums in 2016.
I know it’s been cold up north, but it got cold down here too – at least in our perspective. Citrus doesn’t do well in subfreezing weather, and it got down to -2.5C (27.5F) the last three nights. Had to put a string of lights in my orange and lemon tree (thanks to a suggestion to me from Robyn of Quadra Island!) and put a fabric blanket over the trees, and I think I saved me crop. Just had an orange that I picked this morning and didn’t seem to have any freeze damage. Yay! Good crop this year too, about 150 oranges. And my lemon tree has about 25 lemons on it. Time for a lemon merengue pie for Christmas.
Hello!
how long do oranges keep?
Holy shit there were a lot of good albums out this year! Sorry if you missed out on them. My problem will be narrowing it down to 10.
Hey Kirby, my navel oranges usually ripen right now, end of November and into December. They can remain on the tree into January, provided there is no freezing. Handy having them on the tree, as they remain somewhat refrigerated at least at night. And come the end of February, the blossoms will appear and the cycle will begin again. But frost is always a danger for all citrus in California.
When are you going to finally get to Victoria?
That would be lovely to just go to a tree in your yard and pick some fruit. I could handle that.
Darb, yeah, there had to be great albums this year, but I don’t have the time or actually the interest in going to seek them out. That’s what radio is for in my opinion. And now, with the remnants of Radio3 geo fenced, even that is unavailable to me now. Maybe that’s what Canada wants. So …
But I’m slipping back into the past again. Listening to hits of the 1970s and 80s on two FM stations here in Sacramento, and right now, I’m listening to an aircheck of some real radio: The Real Don Steele on 93KHJ in Boss Angeles, recorded on December 26, 1968, back when I was a senior in high school! Right now playing, “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me” some great 1968 soul by The Supremes with The Temptations. *sigh* And hitbound, “Fill Me Up Buttercup” by the Foundations!
We make playlists every Friday here if you ever want to hear some Canadian Indie.
I like to go back to the “oldies” occasionally but I can never stay there long.
Darb, I’ve told the story many times before, but when I met four kids in their late teens, early 20s riding the train to Sydney, NS back in 1977, I asked them – none of who had ever been further away than Toronto, and none to the States – what was the first thing that came to their mind when I said, “California”. The first three all said what was expected – sunshine, surfing, the beach, it’s always sunny and warm, and so on. But the last girl who was from Newfoundland said, “No. To me, California is a place where you can actually pick fruit off of a tree.”
And speaking of that, this spring, I’m digging up a couple of tulip trees to put in peaches and/or nectarines. Should produce in a couple of years.
Darb, I’m blocked from streaming any music at work, and I’ve never tried to stream it from my iPhone, although in the end, that’s the only way I got Radio3 as the office got more and more comprehensive in blocking stuff. Back in the early R3 days, it was totally unblocked to both blog and listen. Made the work day so much more enjoyable!
But again, it’s the radio element I miss: Who it was, where they’re from, info about them, where they’re touring and so on. I’m just an old radio guy and have always disliked what used to be called “automated radio”. Give me a good jock to actually sell the product! And even listening to these airchecks from 1968, I’m enjoying the commercials!
I know you are a “radio guy” and it is a shame what has happened but I am still loving the music that Canada is making. For me, that is the most important part, the music.
I’m going to use the Friday playlists to help me determine what came out in 2016. I was all set to add an Amelia Curran album that I discovered in 2016 to the list only to realize it came out in 2014! Whoops!
@janet – That happens. I have a couple albums that I loved this year that came out last year and that is why I asked if they needed to be 2016. It turns out I found around 40 albums that came out this year that I enjoyed in some form. It was a great year of music for my tastes.
We could start following the idea Wynnzie had a while ago but use it as a monthly, or a quarterly, best albums list and use those results as a short list for the best albums of the year
Quarterly would probably be enough.
Have a good night everyone! I’m off to (finally) see Rogue One!
Enjoy!
I am watching this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrLF1hZqTwk
g’night folks