While the music industry’s superstars certainly clean up when it comes to live shows and merch, some recent data indicates that, when it comes to album sales and streaming revenue, the industry is quite a bit more democratic than one would guess.
Most of us think that only the top 1% in music, the superstars, make most of the money.
Well, they certainly do when you take touring and merch into consideration, but not when you look at sales and streams, which will surprise many industry naysayers.
Rockonomic did a recent study based upon Nielsen’s 2014 music report and found the following:
- The Top Ten CD albums account for only 6.624% of total CD Album Sales.
- The Top Ten Digital Tracks account for only 3.759% of total Track Sales
- The Top Ten On-Demand (Stream) Tracks account for just 0.98% of total Track Streams.
If these figures hold true for this year as well (and there’s no reason to believe they won’t), it shows that when it comes to streaming, the average consumer’s taste goes beyond the hits.
It seems that the music business is a lot more democratic than we give it credit for. Artists and bands should take heart in the fact that there appears to be plenty of room for other music besides what comes from the superstars.
