Digital downloads of songs continued to fall out of favour with Americans in the first half of the year, while free and paid music-streaming revenue kept growing, even without much of a bump from the launch of Apple Music.
That’s according to mid-year sales figures released by the Recording Industry Association of America on Monday. They show overall music industry revenue fell a half percentage point to $3.2 billion (Dh11.7 billion).
Revenue from paid subscriptions to services like Spotify and Rhapsody grew 25 per cent to $478 million, while revenue from free services like Pandora grew 22 per cent to $550 million.
Download sales revenue fell 4 per cent to $1.3 billion, while physical disc sales dropped 17 per cent to $748 million.
Apple Music launched on the last day statistics were recorded.
