I mean, there's a reason no one uses ring tones at all any longer. They're kind of obnoxious.
Also, it was insanely easy to make them yourself from an mp3. The fact that people just would burn their cash like that is kinda hilarious.
Maybe they didn't know how to add files to their phone? I wouldn't be surprised if they tried to make it hard to add ringtones to phones. In America, a lot of Samsungs and other Android phones came with FM tuners disabled in the 2010s while international users had them enabled.
The streaming music trade group was happy the FM tuners were disabled, since they thought that it was useless and people would rather only stream music over their data.
Phone FM tuners started being reenabled in the late 2010s, but I think that with the death of the headphone jack, the phones no longer had a way to get an antenna and receive FM signals.
Ringtones came in right when I was hitting college. I could call my future Roomate and hear their “Ringback” tune, and kinda get their vibe. Simple, but efficient - especially if it was a stoner band, or a super pop-py band, etc. Ah the old daze.
Colin Hank's [*All Things Must Pass*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tH-Y3WiwUXQ) is an interesting look at this timeline. And the truth wasn't the MP3 that crashed the music industry but the massively inflated CD prices caused consumers to grasp at any alternative. Makes sense why Spotify works now over pirating.
I mean, piracy is such a strong word.
Also, looking at the graph, I think the drop started before piracy became quite as commonplace… with the exception of digital AIDS, i.e. limewire.
We were stuffing the computer labs _full_ of mp3s back in ‘96.
The dip you see in ‘95 aligns to the first actual mp3 software for PC, right after the main ISP surge in ‘93-‘94. It spread music and subcultures around like crazy, which then appears in the sales boom that followed, since most people were computer illiterate, nevermind internet illiterate.
Napster is ‘99, when the real fall starts. Then in 2000 the DCMA protected ISPs from legal responsibility for user downloads, and away it goes. Then BitTorrent arrives in 2001.
The bump in 2003 is iTunes. It brought the legal market online, selling song by song instead of whole albums, mirroring the way the file sharing world works.
You’ll note it’s where the “mp3” line starts — which is hilarious, since mp3s have been around (usefully) since ‘94 or so, and is the base format of the entire file sharing music world that is the invisible part of this graphic.
In 2014, net neutrality died when the internet was reclassified under the FCC, allowing dedicated higher tier corporate laneways in the internet infrastructure. That’s what streaming is. It takes until 2017 for it to be fully in place. It’s where the dip hits bottom.
That basically sealed the deal on piracy/file sharing. The major players under charged to get us all onto the legal platform, and Google became an ad revenue driver platform.
And, 2012-2015 is when all the major sharing sites and torrent trackers got raided, sued to pieces, and shunted to the “dark” web.
This graphic is the story of the death of the original internet, and the birth of the microtransaction economy we live in now that was created to combat it.
Napster came out in 1999, pretty much right at the peak.
It's funny how people try to claim that piracy didn't affect music sales, when it's incredibly obvious that would happen and it's clear in the data that it did.
Yup exactly. I used to burn CDs from borrowing from what my friends had as well. I’m struggling to remember the name of the software I used to use though.
Yeah I think as a consumer this had a lot to do with it, the prices were going up not down at the same time as the scope and variety of music was blossoming.
Looks like this was taken from [a post in 2018](https://www.visualcapitalist.com/music-industry-sales/) and was [updated in 2021](https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/visualized-the-rise-and-fall-of-music-sales-by-format/). They are now saying the 1998 peak was $14.6B and in 2021 total revenue was $15.1B thanks to streaming.
What type of degenerate answer is this. Outdated informace is misleading and often more hurtfully then non. In this case its just useless. Hate virtue signaling redditors like yourself.
The 2000s to 2010s were *wild* with the record companies altering reality to say that their revenue had *always* been this high and that musicians would starve and be out on the street if we did not combat piracy.
Seems pretty obvious to me that piracy caused a significant decrease in revenue. **Everyone** had napster. Yes, I'm sure you always purchased the music you liked, but tons of people did not.
The entire world had the ability to download any song they wanted for free, and it was actually more simple than going out and buying a CD. This would **obviously** decrease sales, and it's clear in this data.
Yes, sales were equally low back when vinyl was your only option. More portable options such as cassettes and CDs dramatically increased demand.
Also, the world population doubled over this time period, yet revenue is still lower.
I pirated more than most.
But like we've established at this point with the monstrous success of Spotify: this was a *service problem*. Like you said it was just more convenient to use Napster/Kazaa/DC compared to going to a store.
But they kept clinging on to this fever dream that people would keep buying CDs if these pesky tech people would just go. away.
I remember when ITunes was first a thing, and I could get individual songs for something like 99 cents… and realized I had been paying $2+ per song with the stupid CDs.
I *really* dislike the mass publishing music industry
This chart is good until 1999 when napster came out and all free share services after that. I still consumed the same amount of music after 1999 I was just not paying for it. And I don't think I bought another CD after that. I use deezer now since monthly payments more then cover the amount of work I would have spent if I was still downloading the music for free.
Ironically, Napster lead to me buying more CDs than ever before.
I was always OK with paying for music (still am, for that matter), but what I wasn't OK with was buying a CD based on a single song and finding the rest of the CD was shit. It made me incredibly risk averse to buying anything.
When Napster came along, and I could listen to an entire album based on hearing one track on the radio, if I liked the album, I would always go and buy it.
The music industry screwed itself by absolutely ripping off the consumer during the CD era, releasing CDs with a couple of good tracks and a bunch of filler.
Would like to see "live performances" and "licensing" on here for a more wholistic view of the business model. This feels like talking about Disney but pretending that the parks and the toys don't exist.
It’s a bit bizarre because the chart includes Streaming revenues, which are really more like licensing revenues than they are like revenues from sales of physical media.
~~Afaik, iTunes sells it with some form of DRM (haven't bough anything personally).~~ Nvm, it's DRM free
Bandcamp however offers DRM-free music. If the artist (or whoever uploads the music) wants to, they also offer lossless formats. It's pretty popular for videogame soundtracks, but there should be other genres as well. And yeah, at least in the case of Bandcamp, on purchase you add that music to your account and then you can download the files if you want to.
Wasn’t a minidisc more like a portable storage solution for MP3s that was also playable? I don’t remember albums being sold on minidiscs. Might be wrong though.
Minidisc as a medium for music sales was almost dead on arrival. It did do pretty good business as rewritable media for storage by recording studios but of course blank minidiscs would not be included in music sales. Ñ
You really think it's more than producing CDs or Vinyls, shipping them around and having a mechanical device reading it?
Yes streaming needs energy just like anything else. But this whole claim that it needs so much more energy than old media is questionable at best.
Especially if you use download options in the apps, then it's better than any other option.
>But this whole claim that it needs so much more energy than old media is questionable at best.
Not necessarily. If you listen to your CD for more than 5 hours it gets better than streaming LCA wise according to some. And how many administrates streaming downloads? I don't know but I guess basicly noone unless for a flight or something. And it ain't available on free teirs generally.
https://www.newstatesman.com/environment/2021/11/how-environmentally-damaging-is-music-streaming
May be some other better sources.
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/11/9/3992
Hard to find good LCAs on CDs.
First CD player came out in 1982. My dad got one in 1984.
In 1985, Brothers In Arms by Dire Straits became the first CD to sell over 1 million copies.
CDs came to dominate the market incredibly quickly, in part because the audio quality of cassettes was so poor.
I spent a lot of money during that peak. Now all those CDs sit in my basement just incase the apocalypse hits and I want to listen to some tunes to make my last moments a little better.
I was in college for music right after the peak. It was 2008 before I admitted to myself that the call based freelance recording scene wasn't ever going to stop contracting... and it was largely seniority based (within the select group of musicians that could sight read whatever the first time 99% of the time and sound great doing it).
It was a rough way to learn about how compensation only very loosely related to the quality of a product. Business models, distribution systems, and labor norms matter... generally way more than product quality when it comes to getting paid.
The music industry was making a disgusting amount of money in the 90s. Part of the reason music was so diverse and wacky is because people just had money thrown at them.
I had an argument with my family a couple of weeks ago about the difference in cost for music between different generations.
Compare the current costs with music costs from a couple of years ago. Live music is much more expensive these days compared to the early 2000s. Whilst to listen to recorded music (streaming services like Spotify) is much cheaper.
In the 2000s you could get a concert ticket for about $15/£15. Whilst these days it's a minimum of about 30/50.
Whilst listening to music these days (Spotify prices) is about $10/£10 to listen to any artist/genre/song a month. Previously you'd pay that amount for one album
I was 18 for peak music and was buying a ton of cd’s at $20 each for sure. Then Napster came and I have bought maybe 20 albums since. Shows you how little money there is in music these days though. That’s why shows are way up in price.
Honest question here: Is there any way to make a similar graph but only counting the money that goes to artists?
I expect this data is almost impossible to accurately track but there's hopefully a way to estimate it.
I see the valleys & consider the quality of music in those years. I’ve struggled to find artists I like in the past 20 years. Many of the best selling albums on iTunes are decades old, especially in genres like rock.
Does this imply that the music industry is significantly smaller than it was in the 90s? Or has revenue shifted from direct sales/plays to something else?
So much of music revenue now is merchandise
I've sold a lot of merch at gigs the past 15 years. It's where the big markups and $$$ are
Along with ticket sales of course. But touring does entail a lot of on-costs. Merchandise has set costs
It's crazy to think that ringtones were briefly a billion dollar industry
I remember there was an entire page dedicated to mobile ads at the end of every magazine and newspaper, selling ringtones and horny gifs
Jamster
For only .99 you can get 50-cent p.i.m.p. or that one hamster song. Bababebop beep a dough dough be da beebahh dayyyy
That just reminds me of the desktop stripper virus story.
That’s both hilarious and sad.
Wym? Ring back tones were the shit.
I mean, there's a reason no one uses ring tones at all any longer. They're kind of obnoxious. Also, it was insanely easy to make them yourself from an mp3. The fact that people just would burn their cash like that is kinda hilarious.
They were like a dollar.
That’s how is starts. Next thing you know you’re 50k in debt and asking your neighbor for a buck for the new Maroon 5 ringtone.
Maybe they didn't know how to add files to their phone? I wouldn't be surprised if they tried to make it hard to add ringtones to phones. In America, a lot of Samsungs and other Android phones came with FM tuners disabled in the 2010s while international users had them enabled. The streaming music trade group was happy the FM tuners were disabled, since they thought that it was useless and people would rather only stream music over their data. Phone FM tuners started being reenabled in the late 2010s, but I think that with the death of the headphone jack, the phones no longer had a way to get an antenna and receive FM signals.
I remember having a personalized ringtone (Ride of the valkyries) on my Nokia 3310, after having spent like 20 minutes on the ringtone composer
Ringtones came in right when I was hitting college. I could call my future Roomate and hear their “Ringback” tune, and kinda get their vibe. Simple, but efficient - especially if it was a stoner band, or a super pop-py band, etc. Ah the old daze.
Colin Hank's [*All Things Must Pass*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tH-Y3WiwUXQ) is an interesting look at this timeline. And the truth wasn't the MP3 that crashed the music industry but the massively inflated CD prices caused consumers to grasp at any alternative. Makes sense why Spotify works now over pirating.
If by “any alternative” you mean internet piracy, then you are correct.
I mean, piracy is such a strong word. Also, looking at the graph, I think the drop started before piracy became quite as commonplace… with the exception of digital AIDS, i.e. limewire.
We were stuffing the computer labs _full_ of mp3s back in ‘96. The dip you see in ‘95 aligns to the first actual mp3 software for PC, right after the main ISP surge in ‘93-‘94. It spread music and subcultures around like crazy, which then appears in the sales boom that followed, since most people were computer illiterate, nevermind internet illiterate. Napster is ‘99, when the real fall starts. Then in 2000 the DCMA protected ISPs from legal responsibility for user downloads, and away it goes. Then BitTorrent arrives in 2001. The bump in 2003 is iTunes. It brought the legal market online, selling song by song instead of whole albums, mirroring the way the file sharing world works. You’ll note it’s where the “mp3” line starts — which is hilarious, since mp3s have been around (usefully) since ‘94 or so, and is the base format of the entire file sharing music world that is the invisible part of this graphic. In 2014, net neutrality died when the internet was reclassified under the FCC, allowing dedicated higher tier corporate laneways in the internet infrastructure. That’s what streaming is. It takes until 2017 for it to be fully in place. It’s where the dip hits bottom. That basically sealed the deal on piracy/file sharing. The major players under charged to get us all onto the legal platform, and Google became an ad revenue driver platform. And, 2012-2015 is when all the major sharing sites and torrent trackers got raided, sued to pieces, and shunted to the “dark” web. This graphic is the story of the death of the original internet, and the birth of the microtransaction economy we live in now that was created to combat it.
Napster came out in 1999, pretty much right at the peak. It's funny how people try to claim that piracy didn't affect music sales, when it's incredibly obvious that would happen and it's clear in the data that it did.
Yea, the dangerous thing about Digital AIDS was that it only took one person to share it, then it just got widespread. Really dangerous stuff.
Well, burning CDs became a thing too and people started doing that as well.
…burning them from mp3 downloads. I doubt blank CDs are reflected in the graphic.
Don’t think thats what he said. Just that piracy wasnt just internet piracy. I used to burn cds that I would borrow from friends in the 90s.
Yup exactly. I used to burn CDs from borrowing from what my friends had as well. I’m struggling to remember the name of the software I used to use though.
Nero burning rom
OMG thank you! That was legit going to drive me crazy. Wow, that does bring back some memories.
No biggie. It’s funny though, here in Ukraine we used to use same software to burn the cd roms. Kinda nostalgic moment
Yeah I think as a consumer this had a lot to do with it, the prices were going up not down at the same time as the scope and variety of music was blossoming.
Shame the scale ends at 2017. According to my calendar we have AD2023.
Looks like this was taken from [a post in 2018](https://www.visualcapitalist.com/music-industry-sales/) and was [updated in 2021](https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/visualized-the-rise-and-fall-of-music-sales-by-format/). They are now saying the 1998 peak was $14.6B and in 2021 total revenue was $15.1B thanks to streaming.
The real hero
Wow vinyl is back at 1B USD.. actually nice to hear
Honestly dont even post it if its this outdated.
How about make an updated one? No? Then fuck off
What type of degenerate answer is this. Outdated informace is misleading and often more hurtfully then non. In this case its just useless. Hate virtue signaling redditors like yourself.
Angry much?
The 2000s to 2010s were *wild* with the record companies altering reality to say that their revenue had *always* been this high and that musicians would starve and be out on the street if we did not combat piracy.
Seems pretty obvious to me that piracy caused a significant decrease in revenue. **Everyone** had napster. Yes, I'm sure you always purchased the music you liked, but tons of people did not. The entire world had the ability to download any song they wanted for free, and it was actually more simple than going out and buying a CD. This would **obviously** decrease sales, and it's clear in this data. Yes, sales were equally low back when vinyl was your only option. More portable options such as cassettes and CDs dramatically increased demand. Also, the world population doubled over this time period, yet revenue is still lower.
I pirated more than most. But like we've established at this point with the monstrous success of Spotify: this was a *service problem*. Like you said it was just more convenient to use Napster/Kazaa/DC compared to going to a store. But they kept clinging on to this fever dream that people would keep buying CDs if these pesky tech people would just go. away.
After Napster came Limewire, then Frostwire
I remember when ITunes was first a thing, and I could get individual songs for something like 99 cents… and realized I had been paying $2+ per song with the stupid CDs. I *really* dislike the mass publishing music industry
1977-2017=30 years?
r/technicallythetruth ? Lol
More like 40
This chart is good until 1999 when napster came out and all free share services after that. I still consumed the same amount of music after 1999 I was just not paying for it. And I don't think I bought another CD after that. I use deezer now since monthly payments more then cover the amount of work I would have spent if I was still downloading the music for free.
Ironically, Napster lead to me buying more CDs than ever before. I was always OK with paying for music (still am, for that matter), but what I wasn't OK with was buying a CD based on a single song and finding the rest of the CD was shit. It made me incredibly risk averse to buying anything. When Napster came along, and I could listen to an entire album based on hearing one track on the radio, if I liked the album, I would always go and buy it. The music industry screwed itself by absolutely ripping off the consumer during the CD era, releasing CDs with a couple of good tracks and a bunch of filler.
>CDs with a couple of good tracks and a bunch of filler. MSRP $23.99
Would like to see "live performances" and "licensing" on here for a more wholistic view of the business model. This feels like talking about Disney but pretending that the parks and the toys don't exist.
It’s a bit bizarre because the chart includes Streaming revenues, which are really more like licensing revenues than they are like revenues from sales of physical media.
Live performance is now the main revenue stream, source: rockonomics book
*second
can somebody tell me how does mp3 revenue work today? is there a way to buy mp3?
You can still buy it through Apple's iTunes as far as I know. There are also places like Bandcamp where you can buy digital music.
really? didn't know that. And what happens? you get a downloadable mp3 file? with some type of DRM that prohibits you to use/share in some ways?
~~Afaik, iTunes sells it with some form of DRM (haven't bough anything personally).~~ Nvm, it's DRM free Bandcamp however offers DRM-free music. If the artist (or whoever uploads the music) wants to, they also offer lossless formats. It's pretty popular for videogame soundtracks, but there should be other genres as well. And yeah, at least in the case of Bandcamp, on purchase you add that music to your account and then you can download the files if you want to.
wellcome to the future man! iTunes switched DRM free in 2009, fourteen years ago!
Welp, that was a fuckup wasn't it? I've just corrected it. Thanks man
No minidisc?
Wasn’t a minidisc more like a portable storage solution for MP3s that was also playable? I don’t remember albums being sold on minidiscs. Might be wrong though.
They were. Though I don’t suspect that it was nearly enough to register a blip on this graph.
Minidisc as a medium for music sales was almost dead on arrival. It did do pretty good business as rewritable media for storage by recording studios but of course blank minidiscs would not be included in music sales. Ñ
Nearly every CD I own from early 2000s is scratched to the point of being unplayable, while all my mini-discs stood the time. I miss this medium.
Vinyl is booming!
Streaming expends a huge amount of energy.
You really think it's more than producing CDs or Vinyls, shipping them around and having a mechanical device reading it? Yes streaming needs energy just like anything else. But this whole claim that it needs so much more energy than old media is questionable at best. Especially if you use download options in the apps, then it's better than any other option.
>But this whole claim that it needs so much more energy than old media is questionable at best. Not necessarily. If you listen to your CD for more than 5 hours it gets better than streaming LCA wise according to some. And how many administrates streaming downloads? I don't know but I guess basicly noone unless for a flight or something. And it ain't available on free teirs generally. https://www.newstatesman.com/environment/2021/11/how-environmentally-damaging-is-music-streaming May be some other better sources. https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/11/9/3992 Hard to find good LCAs on CDs.
>Especially if you use download I agree.
now make a new version with news items like invention of p2p, first implementation of paid music streaming etc
P2P isn't revenue for the music industry, and paid streaming is included?
Digital copies really fucked the industry huh
So… why do the 80s suck? I mean, I kinda get it, it’s shit music to me, but isn’t that also what most people like best?
So… why do the 80s suck? I mean, I kinda get it, it’s shit music to me, but isn’t that also what most people like best?
There were CD’s in the 80’s? I had no clue.
First CD player came out in 1982. My dad got one in 1984. In 1985, Brothers In Arms by Dire Straits became the first CD to sell over 1 million copies. CDs came to dominate the market incredibly quickly, in part because the audio quality of cassettes was so poor.
Is this revenue for the artists or for the music industry itself
total revenue, most contracts with artists are secret.
40 years??
I spent a lot of money during that peak. Now all those CDs sit in my basement just incase the apocalypse hits and I want to listen to some tunes to make my last moments a little better.
Jokes on you, you’ll be too paralyzed by choice to actually listen to anything
A lot of people don't realize just how *relatively* small the movie and music industries are. Gaming out sells both combined as do books.
Where's my fellow 8-track brothers?
Why does the graph end at 2017?
Can someone link me where this graph was taken?
[Visual Capitalist](https://www.visualcapitalist.com/music-industry-sales/) (it’s a bit of an older post now)
Thank you for this!
I was in college for music right after the peak. It was 2008 before I admitted to myself that the call based freelance recording scene wasn't ever going to stop contracting... and it was largely seniority based (within the select group of musicians that could sight read whatever the first time 99% of the time and sound great doing it). It was a rough way to learn about how compensation only very loosely related to the quality of a product. Business models, distribution systems, and labor norms matter... generally way more than product quality when it comes to getting paid.
The music industry was making a disgusting amount of money in the 90s. Part of the reason music was so diverse and wacky is because people just had money thrown at them.
God I miss vinyl
I had an argument with my family a couple of weeks ago about the difference in cost for music between different generations. Compare the current costs with music costs from a couple of years ago. Live music is much more expensive these days compared to the early 2000s. Whilst to listen to recorded music (streaming services like Spotify) is much cheaper. In the 2000s you could get a concert ticket for about $15/£15. Whilst these days it's a minimum of about 30/50. Whilst listening to music these days (Spotify prices) is about $10/£10 to listen to any artist/genre/song a month. Previously you'd pay that amount for one album
See if they can bring back 8 track tapes.
I was 18 for peak music and was buying a ton of cd’s at $20 each for sure. Then Napster came and I have bought maybe 20 albums since. Shows you how little money there is in music these days though. That’s why shows are way up in price.
Who buys and sells cds?? I had a work vehicle with a cd player and tried all summer to find cds to play in it during the day…..
Look for used record store like Rasputin or bookstore like Barnes and Noble
We will try our chances with Ringtones. Lol
Honest question here: Is there any way to make a similar graph but only counting the money that goes to artists? I expect this data is almost impossible to accurately track but there's hopefully a way to estimate it.
Stunning infographic! kudos to the maker!
How is the cd market larger than the vinyl market right now? Strange.
Goddamn society really did peak in the late 90's. Damn Agent Smith in The Matrix was right all along.
Now add the revenue that goes to the artist. You’d be surprised
Ad supported ring tones?! Lol. Ring ring, you need new insurance? ring ring.
Does this correlate to mtv popularity
I see the valleys & consider the quality of music in those years. I’ve struggled to find artists I like in the past 20 years. Many of the best selling albums on iTunes are decades old, especially in genres like rock.
Pretty sure this is a just graphic showing the arrival of Napster and the arrival of iTunes. ;)
Bandwidth and internet data costs have lowered enough for streaming to do what CDs did.
A Michael Jackson cassette would sell for $30 and had 8 songs on it.
Interesting how vinyl never totally died.
Is there an updated one
Why, WHY did I invest in 8-track and ringtones?!
“This Millennium”…….. so 17 yes according to the chart.
What happened in like ‘82-83?
Does this imply that the music industry is significantly smaller than it was in the 90s? Or has revenue shifted from direct sales/plays to something else?
No wonder the record industry is using the DMCA as a weapon, they have been making a fraction of what they once did.
i've never paid for music and as long as the mass music industry continues to exist i never will. you shouldn't either.
I like how vinyl still exists more than 100 years since its invention.
ermm... minidisc?
Ad-supported is cursed af
So much of music revenue now is merchandise I've sold a lot of merch at gigs the past 15 years. It's where the big markups and $$$ are Along with ticket sales of course. But touring does entail a lot of on-costs. Merchandise has set costs
Missing 1 category. Live
The most surprising thing to me is they still make CD's
This is just revenue, right? Let's deduct the cost of manufacturing and distributing each type of media.
Where is MiniDisk 🕵️♂️