“The music industry finds itself fighting over pennies while waving goodbye to dollars” [CHART]

An RIAA report on the state of the recorded music industry chronicles the dramatic shift from owning (CDs, downloads) to streaming. While I don't entirely agree with all of the conclusions the report draws, one fact is undeniable. The music business is a dramatically smaller business than it was a decade ago, and that's increasingly unlikely to change.

A New York Times analysis of the statistics shared this week by the RIAA leads to a sobering, if not surprising, conclusion: "…the big sales numbers that have sustained the recorded music business for years are way down, and it is hard to see how they could ever return to where they were even a decade ago. "

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via The New York Times

The have been "drastic shifts in listener behavior," according to Ben Sisario and Karl Russell of The Times. "CDs and downloads have been gradually abandoned as streaming has become the platform of choice. The result is that the music industry finds itself fighting over pennies while waving goodbye to dollars."

"It may be possible for the music industry to wring more money out of YouTube," they conclude. "But it seems doubtful that it will ever earn back what it has lost from the CD."

Read the full piece here.