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In 2015, for the first time in history, the music industry made more money from streaming than downloads, says a new report from the Recording Industry Association of America. And Rihanna’s Anti album is the prime sign of the (streaming) times.
In March 2016, five weeks after its debut, Anti was holding the number one position on the Billboard 200. But what is both interesting and startling is the Barbadian singer managed to do so whilst only generating 17,000 true sales in the same week – the lowest a number one album has ever sold.
Yes, while Rihanna and Drake continued to heat up stages around the U.S. performing their hit single Work, make no mistake, streaming of this track is what kept Rihanna’s album in the coveted top spot. According to the report, 34.3% of music sales in 2015 came from streaming compared to 34% of digital downloads. Overall revenues were up 0.9% to $7 billion at estimated retail value and streaming services such as Tidal and Apple Music offset declines in sales of digital downloads and CDs. Streaming made up $2 billion of this revenue, a record number.
Not that we’re surprised by these figures. Amidst our internet-fuelled culture – and in a world where the only thing you’re happy to wait for is a table at a good restaurant – everything happens faster. Millennials love SnapChat so much that entire editorial teams within editorial teams are being created to service content that literally lasts seconds. We now favour watching Netflix over long-length films, deciding who to date is a Tinder swipe over an arduous meet-and-greet and we’re happy to stream a three minute song over downloading an entire album.
Rihanna broke her near-perfect run of releasing an album every year since Music Of The Sun in 2005. And after three years of waiting for an album to follow Apologetic, we were expecting something to blow us away. The album still does just that, the figures just don’t reflect it. And while Jay Z tries desperately to salvage Tidal that he says could change this, in a world of streaming, the figures just don’t matter anymore.
