Streaming Powered Recorded Music Revenue

Streaming powered recorded music revenue to $17.1 billion in 2023, Forbes reports it's the highest topline number the Recording Industry Association of America has registered in its annual report and a surge of 8 percent from the prior year.

Streaming comprises 84% of total revenues and a total of $14.4 billion—an all-time high of 96.8 million paid subscriptions to on-demand services—according to the RIAA report released on March 26.

“Recorded music keeps reaching new heights as labels'... commitment to meet fans everywhere they want to be continued to pay off for the entire music community,” said RIAA chairman and CEO Mitch Glazier in a statement.

“For artists, songwriters, and fans, this strong and sustained growth signals a time of incredible opportunity – with new formats, styles, and sounds rising up across innovative platforms and emerging ways to listen. As new services continue to get fully licensed at rates reflecting music's incredible value, revenue for artists and songwriters will only continue to grow.”

Glazier also sounded a warning about what he called “the mushrooming threat of generative artificial intelligence,” noting that without “thoughtful and effective guardrails,” recorded music’s growth and cultural reach are at risk.

Physical formats also continued to see a resurgence, up 11 percent to $1.9 billion. Vinyl experienced a seventeenth consecutive year of growth, up 10 percent, outsold CDs in units (43 million vs 37 million). Digital downloads accounted for 3 percent of the market, while synch licenses accounted for 2 percent.

Other notable highlights from the report:

• The number of paid subscriptions to on-demand music services reached new heights, with the average number of subscriptions for the year growing 5.7 percent to 96.8 million, compared with an average of 91.6 million for 2022 (excluding limited-tier services)
• Limited tier subscriptions, a category that includes Amazon Prime, Pandora Plus and music licenses for streaming fitness services, fell 4 percent to $1 billion.
• Music revenues from ad-supported on-demand services, such as YouTube, the ad-supported version of Spotify, Facebook, and others, grew at a slower pace than previous recent years, up 2 percent to $1.9 billion. Ad-supported services contributed 11 percent of total 2023 recorded music revenues.
• Digital and customized radio music revenues—a category that includes includes SoundExchange distributions for revenues from services such as SiriusXM and Internet radio stations, and payments directly paid by similar services—grew 8 percent to $1.3 billion. SoundExchange distributions grew 5 percent to $1 billion, while other ad-supported streaming revenues of $318 million were up 22 percent.