Music sales in US remain steady, but lucrative CD sales decline

New York

THERE is plenty of good news in the music industry's latest sales report released this week. Streaming is up. Vinyl has continued its unlikely renaissance. And did we mention that streaming is up?

But a closer look shows that the big sales numbers that have sustained the recorded music business for years are way down, and it is hard to see how they could ever return to where they were even a decade ago.

Revenue from music sales in the United States has hovered around US$7 billion since 2010, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. For 2015, the number was US$7.02 billion, up slightly less than one per cent from 2014.

Within that steady total, however, have been drastic shifts in listener behaviour. CDs and downloads have been gradually abandoned as streaming has become the platform of choice. The result is that the music industry finds itself figh…