Re:Globally, Almost Four Out of Ten Music Consumers Are Pirates
by dmayle on Wednesday October 10, 2018 @12:12PM
(#18186250)
https://cdn.mbw.44bytes.net/files/2018/04/Screen-Shot-2018-0...
Revenue didn't bottom out. CD revenue is still on the decline, and digital revenue is still on the decline.
Ever since the age of the first recording, music has worked on a freemium model. Music was free to listen to via the radio (and ad-supported), which acted as an advertisement and upsell for physical (and later digital) media sales.
With the decline of radio and physical media, as well as the democratization of distribution (less hits, revenue spread more evenly), the music industry has been searching for a replacement business model that works.
It looks like they've found it in streaming services.
I keep seeing this mentioned, but seriously, it was only in 2015 the revenues bottomed out and started to rise again. And it is not anywhere close to its peak in the 90s in real terms, and less so in terms of % spending.
Globally, China's music industry make less than $100M a year. That second largest economy in the world, and its Music revenue is less than half of Thailand.
The industry has changed, and in the west Musicians made much more money in their live performance, K-Pops have all their songs on youtube for free. Chinese Pop stars get much more from advertisement deals and other media. Japanese still loves CDs. A lot of people have grown up to consume music which is totally free.