The 2015 U.S. Music Year-End Report compiled by Nielsen had a lot of media outlets exclaiming how much positive growth there is in the industry right now, but one analysis from Stereogum is showing that the numbers are up for interpretation.
We're all very quick to proclaim 2015 as the year of Adele, but 25 came out just six weeks before the year ended. There's a lot of missing time and revenue that the industry is not paying attention to.
On the surface those numbers look good, too. There was a 29.8 percent increase in vinyl sales, an 83.1 percent increase in songs streamed via on-demand services such as Spotify and Apple Music and a 101.9 percent increase in songs streamed from video services, which boils down to YouTube and Vimeo.
But looking at only those numbers would be missing the bigger picture.
On vinyl sales, Stereogum notes that only three of the top 10 selling LPs of 2015 were actually released that year: 25, Sufjan Stevens' Carrie & Lowell and Alabama Shakes' Sound & Color. The rest of the albums are either from last year, when the vinyl revival was at its peak, or from legacy acts from the '60s and '70s such as The Beatles and Pink Floyd. Adele's sales in the last six weeks of the year also represent a huge chunk of that 29.8 percent growth, and that's not a reliable measure on which to stake the future of a medium.
Streaming has also been growing for years now, but 2015 was especially poignant with the release of Jay Z's Tidal and Apple Music. Spotify also had its fastest period of growth in the months after June, expanding at least 87.5 percent between 2014 and 2015.
There's also the matter of consumers moving toward free services such as YouTube, which pays much less per stream, and findings showing no matter how low the monthly cost is, listeners are unwilling to pay for music.
Read the full analysis over at Stereogum for a full breakdown of the numbers.
