The general trend in the music industry has been a steady decline in sales of downloads, and that appears to be impacting even niche stores. EDM and DJ specialty platform Beatport’s financial information was released in the quarterly filings for parent company SFX Entertainment. In the first quarter this year, the company’s revenue from digital downloads totaled $8.9 million, compared with $11.6 million for the same metric in the year-ago period. Downloads accounted for 95.5% of Beatport’s revenue outside of live events in 2014. This year, it was 73.9%, as money from sponsorship and media sales and other marketing services increased their contributions to the bottom line.
On a national level, many markets have reported that a decline in streaming is being offset by increases in streaming revenue. It’s worth noting that SFX Entertainment did launch a free Beatport streaming service this February to complement the paid download store.