Dr. Richard James Burgess, president and CEO of US indie label association A2IM, says that he is “deeply concerned about the drop in subscription revenues coincident with the growth of subscription numbers” in the US, after the recent release of the RIAA figures for 2020.
While the number of total streaming subscribers in the US has continued to grow at ever-increasing rates, the growth in streaming subscription revenue appears to be slowing, at least on a year-by-year basis.
According to the RIAA, income from full-service paid subscriptions grew 14.6% in 2020; but this was down from a 27.5% increase year-on-year in 2019 and a 33.0% rise in 2018.
An RIAA spokesperson tells Music Ally that in the second half of 2020 average revenue per subscription was higher than in the first half. This is one of the angles explored in our new country profile of the US, which you can read here.