Expansión newspaper – Madrid
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Music streaming services have attracted 100 million new subscribers during the pandemic. At the end of 2020, more than 443 million users were paying a subscription for an account on one of these platforms, according to the new Global Music Report by IFPI, the record industry association.
The change in music consumption habits and the adoption of streaming has allowed the record industry to chain for six years of growth. In 2020, revenues increased by 7.4% to US $ 21.6 billion, the best figure since 2002. The volume of business is still below the historical record of 1999, in the middle of the golden age of CD, when the industry recorded revenues of US $ 28.9 billion.
Record companies stress that growth during 2020 is due to streaming platforms, which shot up their payment business by 18.5%. The total contribution of these companies, also adding the income that some of them achieve with free services financed by advertising, reached US $ 13.4 billion, representing a growth of 20%.
Streaming already accounts for 62% of the revenue of the recorded music industry. Within this category, subscriptions to paid services generate 46%, with the rest coming from advertising. As the dominant format, it already represents more than half of the sector’s revenues in 48 countries.
Goodbye to downloads
The good health of this business more than compensates for the fall in other sources of income such as music recorded in physical format (-5%), performance rights on radio stations and other public places such as concerts (-10%) and downloads of music, which have become a minority option. In fact, they already account for less than 6% of the sector’s income after collapsing by 17%.
The leader Spotify, a pioneer of this model, had 155 million subscribers to its premium service at the end of last year. The company claims that it is the largest contributor to the recorded music industry, since it generated 20% of revenues in 2019.
The European music platform recently revealed that last year it paid more than US $ 5 billion in royalties to rights owners, compared to US $ 3.3 billion in 2017. In total, it claims that it has disbursed more than US $ 23 billion for rights since its founding. Of reproduction. As he stresses, it pays two-thirds of every dollar that comes in in royalties.
Complaints
The recovery of the recording industry is consolidated at a time when many musicians denounce that the music streaming model does not allow a fair remuneration to artists.
The American union The United Musicians and Allied Workers Union (UMAW) demands that the payment of at least one cent of a dollar be guaranteed for each reproduction on platforms such as Spotify.
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