Charted: 50 Years of Music Industry Revenues, by Format | Hacker News Reader

Charted: 50 Years of Music Industry Revenues, by Format

visualcapitalist.com

The linked source data from the RIAA is presented much better: https://www.riaa.com/u-s-sales-database/

Positive money is up on the y axis

Huh, viewing the graph "adjusted for inflation" this seems to suggest to me streaming has solved the crisis of making money for artists? It seems like there's a sharp jump for the 20s and it's reaching 70s highs again.

Nope. Streaming cannibalized recording sales, where artists got more of that revenue. Payouts for artists on streaming are fractional and arguably opaque than per recording sales (most of the problems of record company contracts & accounting and then a few more to boot). They don't take home the revenue you're seeing here.

We had a missed opportunity to let digital recording retail replace media sales, the Bandcamp model could have been bigger. Spotify moved fast and broke a lot of things and did more goddamned damage to the sector than "piracy" by adopting the fundamental business model with a bit of convenience and veneer of legitimacy.

Yeah. One striking conclusion from the data is that MP3 sales never really took off in an appreciable way and only for a short period. Some of that is perhaps obscured by "Buy the CD and rip" but, given the decline in CD sales, not really.

An analyst friend of mine once said that the Napster win was about convenience, not cost. I was skeptical at the time but there's some evidence of that.

> Spotify moved fast and broke a lot of things and did more goddamned damage to the sector than "piracy" by adopting the fundamental business model with a bit of convenience and veneer of legitimacy.

For broadcast radio, songwriters received royalties and record companies got nothing.

This changed for satellite and internet radio, and I don't think Spotify is to blame.

The changes for satellite and internet radio had their own problems that I do think should be addressed, but you're right, that's not Spotify's fault.

But Spotify bears the brunt of the responsibility for building a product that was on-demand recording buffet that essentially exists to replace recording collections while yielding broadcast-order payouts rather than being an honest broadcast product.

1. That graph shows adjusted revenues lower than the 90s and early 2000s and even one or two years in the 70s.

2. It’s not a chart of what artists take home, but rather raw top line revenue, and it seems clear from all available evidence that the economics of Spotify et al are significantly worse for artists than they were with CDs. People have accepted this because it seemed better than piracy where revenue is zero.

I believe it's extremely lopsided. The top artists take up a lion's share of the revenue while smaller artists make much much lower than what they used to make in sales. Smaller artists mostly use the streaming platforms for publicity and then make most of their money from their performances.

Seems like the data is US only, i.e., not worldwide. While the RIAA charts prominently mention this, the OP for some reason does not.

Oh, thanks, was wondering about how to interpret these graphs as well. Really weird design.

Seems to keep crashing for me in Vivaldi.

Why isn’t the bottom of the graph flat?

I can see how at any particular year the revenue from each source is represented by its color in the vertical slice, but what is the significance of the baseline going up and down over time?

The vertical is total revenue for the year, centered around the axis. More emotional than a flat bottom edge, less info, less wasted space on the page.

The bands appear to be stacked older-format-lower.

It’s visually interesting, but without a vertical scale I’m immediately suspicious.

it is vertically symmetrical. it just doesn't look like it is because the horizontal year axis is in the wrong place.

i am happy to say i never spent a penny on a ring tone.

I am sad to say I definitely did, that said I feel like it was a rite of passage for a Motorola Razr owner

But it’s not vertically symmetrical? Look at paid streaming. Definitely not symmetrical.

I think the totals are--or at least they're close. But it's just sort of a weird way to do a visualization as opposed to just zero-basing the Y-axis.

Gotcha. Yeah, the totals are, but it makes it very hard to compare different categories. Grr.

Do we need even more confirmation that 1999 was the greatest year ever?

And Spotify has never made a profit.

https://www.businessofapps.com/data/spotify-statistics/#:~:t....

Why is ad supported streaming considered a sale but radio isn't?

If I am not mistaken, over the air radio does not have to pay royalties.

Mostly correct. Radio, satellite, and internet all pay different kinds of royalties at different levels (or used to, last I checked). I believe radio only pays the songwriters/publishers, whereas [streamer] might’ve also paid the performers.

This is also different than how individual companies - say Spotify - pay for content via direct deals.

I’m also confused because Pandora is ad-supported and generated ~1B per year, but the numbers here are low. But that may be captured in some other metric.

This is missing a line for (pre-recorded) MiniDisc sales. ;)

I wonder if that's larger than for prerecorded DCC (Digital Compact Cassette). There's still some for sale[0].

[0] https://www.dccmuseum.com/cassettes/our-dcc-releases

Maybe it’s there but is sub pixel?

If it’s not in the legend, it’s not there.

I was always a vinyl guy. At least up into the late 90's, when digital sound engineering started to become on par with analog. At least for my taste.

I will never forgive myself, that I didn't buy tons and tons of vinyl at the end of the 80's, early 90's, when they could be had for cents/piece. Admittedly I was a very poor student back then, but I should have spent less money on party and more money on vinyl.

In the DIY scene (hardcore, punk, metal, etc.) vinyl was a very popular format for independent bands because it was cheap and accessible (both for the bands, their small labels if they even had one, and the fans), but I think obscurity and doing the opposite of what the mainstream is doing were significant factors as well. I used to have an absolute shitload of 7”, EPs, and LPs from random bands all over the world but I got rid of them because a good amount of it I didn’t listen to anymore, and I just didn’t have the space for a record collection. Some of those records that I got for next to nothing are outrageously expensive now in the aftermarket. With the vinyl revival that’s been happening for a few years, oddly enough some bands are going to cassette tapes for similar reasons as the old vinyl days.

I’m looking forward to the 8 track revival and the wax cylinder revival.

For sites like that graph thank goodness I have Kill Sticky Headers bookmarked:

https://alisdair.mcdiarmid.org/kill-sticky-headers/

Whoever designed that graph …

That graph, what the heck is it even meant to be?

overall span is the total revenue, the individual colours within are the share of each format. normally a graph like that would be fine but they mirrored it across the x axis because someone in the chain don't care about the data really they just want the appearance of statistics. that sort of mirrored plot is gaining traction is some science fields too and some people hate it, look up "violin plot"

I thought it was pretty clear actually. One of the better visualisations you see - they didn't make any major mistakes.

If you want to see some truly grotesque visualisations go to /r/dataisbeautiful.

Why does 8-Track look like the Great state of Texas?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com