1999 Revenue > USD40 Billion<p>If I'm understanding this article correctly, then the revenue for 2018 <i>should</i> be somewhere around USD9.2 Billion.<p>Wow. I had never seen actual numbers on what revenue digital actually brings in before. And these numbers are <i>total</i> revenue. <i>Before</i> expenses and such.<p>I can only hope that in this carnage it was the record labels that lost share size in the pie and the artists got a larger piece. But somehow I think what's more likely is that the record labels just started splitting the pie with the tech companies. Or the tech companies <i>became</i> the record labels in some instances. Probably very few of the artists started getting a larger share of the pie in this changeover.<p>It's sad to look at. I guess they make the music for the love of the art anyway, but it'd be nice to see them get rewarded for it.
I'm still solidly stuck in the 1600's and the 60's to 80's for the vast majority of the music that I listen to.<p>Just the other day I noticed how little 'new' music I've got in my collection, there is a couple of Passenger songs in there and some lesser known stuff that my eldest sent me to listen to that got stuck but for the most part whatever is new is not for me.<p>At the same time I hate the 'services' economy that we are moving to, the whole feeling that for the rest of your life you are looking to divide your income over a large number of forced subscriptions is something that runs counter to how I want to live.<p>So I'm happy with my mostly ripped-from-CDs music collection and likely the music industry will see less than $250 from me for the rest of my time.
They lost control of it with the ipod and apple music. Any song $0.99. That was the end of the record labels dictating prices. If they held out and refused apple, they would lose to the other labels. The market was too big. The ipod, too popular.<p>They were already feeling the squeeze from retail. Consolidation of record stores left large retailers like Walmart with the bulk of sales. CD sales would account for < 1% of Walmart's total sales but would account for > 40% of the labels sales. This allowed Walmart to undercut the labels own prices and sell CDs as a loss leader putting downward pressure on overall prices.