In 1999, Napster was born. And the music industry shuddered. For the next 13 years, music sales dropped and dropped as music piracy became a more and more accepted and established way of obtaining music.
This year, however, music sales rose. On Tuesday, Rolling Stone reported that the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry is reporting a slight gain in 2012. The gain was only 0.3 percent, but a gain is a gain.
But in recent years, the idea of piracy as the best way to get music has finally gone out of style. Especially with the rise of indie bands, people are much more conscious of ensuring that the musician gets the money.
Now, that’s not to say that indie musicians are the reason for the rise in sales. It’s a couple other factors that helped out a lot, in my opinion.
Streaming services
Spotify hit the U.S. in July 2011 and was an immediate hit, taking Pandora and raising the stakes of a free streaming service. All of a sudden, people didn’t have to choose between buying a song and illegally downloading it. Now, people could test out a song for free and buy it later.
This year – and forgive me for writing about it yet again – Myspace burst back onto the Internet scene as a music-driven site. Its user-friendly interface and excellent streaming library offered people yet another alternative to piracy. And it’s helping. According to Rolling Stone, the IFPI expects that streaming services will account for 10 percent of digital music revenue before long.
Adele
OK, so Adele isn’t really the main reason that music revenue rose this past year. But she certainly helped it along, with her beyond-successful “21” selling 8.3 million copies as reported by Rolling Stone. Keep in mind, that album came out in 2011. It was still topping the charts a year later. The newly minted Academy Award winner certainly is doing well for herself and for the music industry.
Other superstars are helping out as well – Taylor Swift, One Direction and the like. The bottom line is that this year, the music industry was lucky enough to have several mega-popular albums be released. It’s great news for this year, but it also brings up questions for the future. If 2013 doesn’t have quite the wealth of superstar albums that this past year had, then chances are music revenue will drop next year. Who that superstar would be, I’m not sure – unless Adele somehow releases another album next year, in which case the entire music world can rest easy knowing that it will be making a lot of money.
I also tend to believe that the further rising popularity of mega-festivals such as Coachella, Stagecoach and Sasquatch! have also contributed to the rise in music purchases with people discovering new favorite bands at the festival. Who knows, maybe if more mega-festivals crop up, that will prove to be another boon for the music industry.
But it’s a new year, and only time will tell.
Do you think revenue will rise again in 2013? Email Bain at abain@media.ucla.edu. “B-Sides” runs every Thursday.