Consultancy firm Midia Research has published its predictions for the size of the global recorded-music market in 2018. The headline figure is $18.9bn, which would represent 8.2% growth from 2017, matching that year’s increase.
Midia also sees streaming revenues accounting for $9.6bn of that (so 50.8% of the total), although it expects year-on-year streaming growth to have fallen from 41% in 2017 to 29% in 2018.
But the company claims that ‘artists direct’ are the big winners this year: those working outside the label system. “Total Artist Direct revenue was $643 million, up an impressive 35% on 2017, i.e. more than three times faster than the market,” reported Midia. “Unlike the rest of the market, Artists Direct revenue growth is accelerating in both percentage and absolute terms, with market share up from 2.7% in 2017 to 3.4% in 2018.”
Note, 2018’s $643m is much higher than the $101m figure for artists-direct revenues in 2017 that Midia recently published in indie body WIN’s latest Wintel report. However, the Wintel figure was focused purely on D2C sites like Bandcamp and PledgeMusic as well as physical music sold at concerts. Midia’s number today adds back in revenues via digital distributors.
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