There’s been a lot of discussion about falling music download sales in the US last year, and the extent to which that’s caused by rising streaming music usage. Expect the debate to continue in 2014, with Billboard noting yesterday that for the first three weeks of this year, track sales are down 11.9% year-on-year, while digital album sales are down 13.3%. This time last year, those figures were up 2.2% and 18.1% respectively. The article also suggests that the decline may well increase over this year, judging by quarterly trends in 2013 that saw track sales fall by 1.3% in Q1, 3.3% in Q2, 6% in Q3 and 12.9% in Q4. And yet here comes the kicker as ever: “The decline in download revenue can be offset – and likely overcome – by gains in streaming revenue. Between on-demand video services like YouTube and Vevo, Internet radio services such as Pandora and a host of on-demand subscription services, hundreds of millions of incremental digital revenue should be realised in the United States this year.” We’re waiting with baited breath for actual revenue figures for 2013, to see how the numbers stacked up last year.
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Tools :: We Are Giant
With “fan communities” being on every artist’s team’s mind, we’re fans of the fact that…