Streaming Dominates Music Revenue

The U.S. recorded music market grew a little bigger in the first half of 2024 — but not by much. The retail value of total industry revenue reached $8.65 billion, according to Billboard citing RIAA figures released Thursday (Aug. 29), thanks mainly to a modest gain in streaming revenue and a jump in vinyl sales.  

While the period’s revenue is a record for the first half of a year, it marked just a 3.9% gain from the prior year’s period. The U.S. market has returned to a more workmanlike trajectory, putting high-single digit and double-digit gains in the rear-view mirror. By contrast, revenue was up 8.8% and 9.0% in the first half of 2022 and 2023, respectively. In the first half of 2021, as paid and ad-supported streaming benefitted from pandemic-era lockdowns that drove consumers to their devices, revenue rocketed 27.0%.

Vinyl EP and LP sales totaled 24.3 million units, up 10.7%, and were valued at $739.9 million, up 17%. Other physical formats gained, too, but the distance between them and vinyl grew larger. CD sales improved just 0.3% to $236.7 million. The other category—encompassing cassettes, CD singles, vinyl singles, DVD audio and SACD—improved 66.6% to $13.2 million. 

Physical sales increased its percentage of total revenue to 11.4% from 10.5% in the prior-year period and 10.2% in the first half of 2022. Vinyl has doubled its share of the market in five years, reaching 8.5% of total U.S. revenue — up from 4.2% in the first half of 2020.  

Streaming still dominates industry revenue and provided the single-biggest dollar gain of all the categories. Total streaming revenue grew 3.8% to $7.3 billion and accounted for 84.1% of total revenue, equal to the year-ago period. Paid subscription revenue hit $5.23 billion, up 5.1%, leading all streaming categories by a wide margin. The average number of subscribers reached 99 million, up just 2.6%, suggesting record labels benefitted from price increases by Spotify and other services.