The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) recently released a report that details how the music industry has grown in 2018, and results are surprising. Revenues from streaming music platforms like Spotify and YouTube, but also digital radio hubs like Pandora and SiriusXM, grew 30% year-over-year to reach $7.4 billion, contributing 75% of total revenues for 2018. Subscriptions to on-demand streaming services remained the biggest driver of increasing revenues for the music business, and for the first time accounted for more than half of total revenues for the year.

Digital download revenues and physical purchases were down this year by 27% and 41%, respectively, continuing a general downward trend since the advent of online music sharing. Good news for Vinyl sales, which in recent years have become more ‘trendy’, and increase of 8% versus last year, the highest level since 1988. By value, vinyl made up more than one-third of revenues from physical formats. So, what can we expect for 2019 ?