The business of music streaming has been booming thanks to companies like Pandora and Spotify, but with the growth of music streaming, many record labels have not been happy, saying it’s been affecting their music sales. While this may hold up to be true, there’s also other data out there thats suggests streaming actually offsets the decline of music sales by reducing the amount of music that is illegally downloaded. Today, reports on Universal Music Group’s official earnings for 2015 provide compelling evidence to back up this fact. UMG’s 2015 fiscal year was their biggest growth in over a decade, with total revenues going up 1.4% and total net profit up 11.3% from 2014 – they’re attributing the increase to “strong growth in streaming and subscription sales, which has more than offset the decline in physical sales and downloads.”
As you can see in the graph above, it’s clear while physical sales continue to decrease, streaming and subscription services are well on the rise. More details on this story can be found here.