Research company Roy Morgan released a study that found streaming has been taking ground away from traditional music sales in Australia. The data compared the audience for different music outlets in the 12 months to March 2012 with the same period in 2016. The audience for streaming has spiked in that time frame, with just 10.3% of Aussies using that tech in 2012 and 19.7% turning to streams in 2016. Download and physical sales have not seen the same performance. Instead, both lost customers, with paid downloads sliding from 6.1% in 2012 to 4.6% in 2016 and online CD sales dropping from 2.1% to 1.1%.
The results did show one interesting bright spot for downloads. Consumers who buy downloads of movies or television are almost 10 times more likely to also purchase a music download compared with the average listener.
