Music industry adapting

The Herald reports:

After almost two decades of relentless decline caused by piracy and falling prices, the music business is enjoying a fragile recovery thanks to the growth of paid streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music.

The U.S. industry is on pace to expand for the second straight year- the first time that’s happened since the CD sales peaked in 1998 and 1999. Retail spending on recorded music grew 8.1 percent to $3.4 billion (NZ$4.64 billion) in the first half of 2016, according to a midyear report from the Recording Industry Association of America that was obtained by Bloomberg News.

The credit goes to streaming – Internet services that give listeners commercial-free access to millions of songs for a monthly fee, or for free if they’re willing to hear ads. U.S. streaming revenue grew 57 percent to $1.6 billion ($2.19 billion) in the first half of 2016 and accounted for almost half of industry sales.

“It feels like the market is slowly recovering after years of being in crisis and shrinking,” said Zach Katz, the head of U.S. operations at BMG Rights Management GmbH, a record label and music publisher whose artists have included M.I.A. and Blink 182. “It’s absolutely a step in the right direction.”

This is good news and shows that eventually an industry does adjust the Internet breaking their old business model.