U.S. recorded music revenues in 2023 continued the flat-to-upward movement of recent years. Looking at the year-over-year reckoning supplied by the Recording Institute Association of America, we see paid music subscriptions continue the past growth trend since 2019 (see below), but with slowing upward movement.
Digital downloading of tracks and albums continues its deep dive, reducing from $650-million to $434-million. As recently as 2021, digital downloads generated $622-million. The plunge is fierce, and can be viewed on a larger timeline below:
Overall recorded music revenue as measured in dollars not adjusted for inflation shows threadbare growth in what appears to be a three-year holding pattern:
Putting all the top line numbers together into a pie chart, the RIAA offers this:
It is a streaming world … at least in the U.S.
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