Ringtones Are Still Bigger Than Spotify, Rhapsody, & Rdio Combined

It's the same reason why CDs are still selling billions, year after year. Technology simply moves faster than consumers, and older formats die hard. Which is why ringtones still accounted for $277.4 million in revenues last year - in the US alone - according to stats just released by the RIAA. That compares to $241.0 million revenues from the likes of Spotify, Rdio, Rhapsody, MOG, and ilk, according to the same dataset.

[via Digital Music Review]

Digital Music Now Pays Artists More Than Pubs

UK songwriters, composers and music publishers received 3.2 percent higher royalty earnings in 2011, as new online music services boosted payouts, according to paidcontent.org.

Payouts via Performing Right Society (PRS) For Music from online services surged 45.3 percent to £38.5 million, overtaking pubs and clubs, which must pay PRS for playing music, as an earner for the artists. Many UK bars closed last year.

PRS For Music credits both existing services like iTunes and emerging streaming and subscription services like Spotify, Deezer and We7 for the growth.

Ringtones’ contribution continued to fall, to just £600,000 for the year.

Online royalties are only six percent of the total collected by PRS For Music but are nonetheless welcome because payouts from sales of CDs and DVDs fell by 13.3 percent.

Read more.

Spotify hits 3m subscribers

Spotify has signed up three million paying subscribers after launching in the US and creating a deep partnership with Facebook.

[via The Telegraph]

The Music Business Welcomes the Future, a Decade Behind Schedule

It took more than a decade. But the music industry’s sales numbers are finally starting to make sense to the kind of people who are reading this story right now: For the first time ever, the labels’ digital sales have surpassed CDs and vinyl.

But just barely: Digital sales accounted for 50.3 percent of all U.S. music purchases last year, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Read full article in All Things D.

Albums decline but digital rises

Digital music sales continued to rise in the UK in 2011, but not by enough to prevent an overall decline in album sales, according a BPI press release, reports the BBC.

The music industry body said that 26.6 million digital albums were sold, a 24% rise on the previous year.

However, CD album sales continued to drop - for the seventh consecutive year - and fell by 13% to 86.2 million discs. Overall, 6% fewer albums were sold than in 2010. for seventh successive year despite downloads

Read more.

[Infographic]: Impact of Online Music

The Grovo Labs infograph embedded below was designed to show how much the internet has impacted the music industry globally, both good and bad.

Some of the facts:

-- An artist needs to have their song streamed on Spotify over 4 Million times a month, just to make minimum wage ($1,160)

-- Only 17% of global online consumers legally download digital music

-- iTunes (23 countries) is only the second largest online music service, second to eMusic (27 countries)

Click here for full size infograph here:

[Infographic]: Ringtones make up 1/3 of the online music industry

In 2011 ringtones seem like a distant memory. You probably haven't downloaded one in years, and the idea of having a hit radio song play every time your phone rings makes you shudder with embarrassment. Yet ringtones are, somehow, far from dead. Somewhere out there, millions of people are still buying ringtones like it's 2005. This infographic by musicproductionschool.net illustrates the ringtone industry today, and it will surprise you.

Created by: Music Production Schools

Ringtones Are a $2.1 Billion Business

In a new study, Gartner says worldwide online music revenue from end-user spending Is on pace to total $6.3 billion in 2011, up from $5.9 billion in 2010.

... In the past 10 years, CD sales, the largest revenue stream for the industry, have eroded, while the online music revenue share is rapidly increasing. Digital downloads and streaming music services — referred to as subscription services — are the clear drivers in the online music industry for the coming years. Gartner estimates that subscription services will account for nearly one-third (29 percent) of end-user online music spending in 2015.

Read full press release.

Spotify’s U.S. Score So Far

The streaming music service has already signed up 1.4 million U.S. users for its free trial, according to a source familiar with the company’s operations.

And Spotify now has 175,000 paying U.S. subscribers, less than a month after it finally opened its doors in America, says the same source.

[via All Thing D]

Report: iTunes costs $1.3 billon per year to run

An interesting report from Asymco estimates that it costs Apple US$1.3 billion per year to run the iTunes store. [via TUAW]

Asymco estimates Apple's monthly content margin cost for iTunes at $113 million, which is more than $1.3 billion per year. Based on past statements by Apple executives, Asymco assumes that the iTunes store is a break even business, and any profits it realizes go right back into its maintenance and expansion.

Read full article.

Apple reportedly pays $100 million to music companies

Apple reportedly has cut a deal with the largest of the four major music companies, securing the rights to its songs for Apple’s coming iCloud music streaming service.

According to The New York Post, Apple will make somewhere between $100 and $150 million in advance payments to the music companies as part of the deal.

[via Appolicious]

RIAA figures reveal continuing decline in mobile music sales

A RIAA report reveals the continuing decline in mobile music sales, which fell from 306 million units in 2009 to 221 million in 2010, with ringtones down 41%, ringback tones down 26% and even full-track music downloads down 23%.

[via music :) ally]

CD and mobile music sales fall in 2010, but vinyl continues its resurgence

While sales of compact discs and ringtones suffered double-digit declines last year, vinyl records enjoyed what appears to be an enduring resurgence in 2010, according to figures released Thursday by the RIAA.

[via The LA Times Blog]

China's online music industry reports increased harvest

Online music content and service providers in China earned about 2.3 billion yuan (349.8 million U.S. dollars) last year, up 14.4 percent from 2009, said a report released by China's Culture Ministry on Wednesday. English.xinhuanet.com reports

According to the report, 2.02 billion yuan, or 90 percent of the total revenue, came from wireless music services via mobile phones, including polyphonic ringtones and download music. The figures saw a year-on-year rise of 9.8 percent.

Read more.

Spotify hits milestone with 1 million subscribers

Online music service Spotify has announced that it now has one million paying subscribers across Europe, reports the BBC.

The Anglo-Swedish company has 6.67 million users, the majority of whom use a free service subsidised by adverts.

Spotify's profitability depends on users switching to premium services that remove adverts and allow listeners to use smartphones.

Read more.

Music Sales Down To One Album Per Person Per Year

New figures out of the USA on the state of the music industry show music sales for 2009 in the USA had fallen to one album for each person for the year. Note - that is a 2009 figure, not 2010. Undercover reports.

Data from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) shows that while digital downloads have had healthy increases by percentage, the revenue generated by the sales of the downloads goes nowhere to replacing the revenue lost from physical sales.

The golden age of the music industry was 1992 – 1999 when the average person purchased around 3.5 albums per year but since 1999 sales have been in steep decline. By 2003, sales had dropped to 2.6 albums per person and have rapidly declined for every year since.

Read full article. Image from Apartment Therapy.

Music labels making millions from YouTube, says Google

YouTube has revealed that its music partners, which range from Sony, Warner, Universal and EMI to independents and individual artists, have doubled and in some cases trebled their monthly revenues over this time last year. [via The New Zealand Herald]

Patrick Walker, senior director of content partnerships for YouTube in Europe, Middle East and Africa, said that after a slow start, the labels saw the site as an important revenue stream. "A few years ago the cheques were pretty small," he said.

"We laugh about that now." There are currently 3 billion "monetised" video hits a week, 50 per cent higher than in May.

Read full article.

In Brazil, the Future of the Music Business is in Cell Phones–And Already Here

After the death of popular music download sites Napster and Kazaa, Brazil went in a very different direction it came to buying songs. Fox News Latino reports.

According to Universal Music Group, 30% of revenue in the country comes from digital sales. Within this amount, 30% of the sales are online and 70% comes from cell phones – almost the opposite from the rest of the world, where online represents 80% of the total. The music industry sees this as a new breath in sales in the biggest market of Latin America.

Read full article. Image from noovo.

The Beatles Have Already Sold More Than 5 Million Songs on iTunes

Two months after making their iTunes debut, more than 5 million tracks and more than 1 million albums by the Beatles have been sold worldwide.

As Entertainment Weekly notes, 2 million of those songs and 450,000 albums sold in the first week alone. The Associated Press reports that the current best-selling Beatles album in the U.S. is Abbey Road, while the top song is "Here Comes the Sun."

[via Mashable]

Against Headphones

One in five teenagers in America can’t hear rustles or whispers, according to a study published in August in The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), reports The New York Times.

These teenagers exhibit what’s known as slight hearing loss, which means they often can’t make out consonants like T’s or K’s, or the plinking of raindrops. The word “talk” can sound like “aw.” The number of teenagers with hearing loss — from slight to severe — has jumped 33 percent since 1994.

Given the current ubiquity of personal media players — the iPod appeared almost a decade ago — many researchers attribute this widespread hearing loss to exposure to sound played loudly and regularly through headphones.

Read full article. Change in Prevalence of Hearing Loss in US Adolescents (JAMA).

Related articles on teenage hearing loss.

Most US Internet users have paid for content

Nearly two-thirds of US Internet users have paid to download or access online content such as music, movies or news articles, a survey showed Thursday.

In the survey:

-- 33 percent of Internet users have paid for digital music online or software

-- 21 percent for apps for cell phones or tablet computers

-- 19 percent for digital games

-- 18 percent for digital newspaper, magazine, or journal articles

-- 16 percent for videos, movies, or TV shows

-- 15 percent for ringtones.

[The AFP]

Apple owns 66% of online music market, Amazon second at 13%

iTunes now makes up 66.2 percent of the online music market, according to new numbers from NPD, with Amazon coming in second with 13.3 percent for the third quarter of 2010.

[via arstechnica]

Ringtones had their day

Ringtones were super-hot in the middle of last decade, as everyone started to get cellphones, and have since fallen in popularity. Note the diminishing spikes around Christmas, which peaked in 2004.

Silicon Alley Insider Chart Of The Day via Business Insider.

Telecom companies cash in on national anthems

Interestingly in many countries, national anthems and national songs are a rage for ringback tones and caller tunes, writes DN&A.

... Telecom and IT analyst IDC has projected that ringback tones will overtake ringtones (the tone that one hears when the mobile rings) by the end of this year. In fact, according to IDC, ringback tones are poised to become the single largest revenue source for mobile entertainment.

Read full article.

Beatles Sales On iTunes Top 450K

The initial Beatles sales figures are in: More than 450,000 albums and 2 million individual songs were sold on iTunes worldwide, according to Apple, since the Beatles catalog was made available Tuesday (Nov. 16). In U.S. the best-selling album was "Abbey Road" and best-selling song was "Here Comes the Sun."

[via Billboard. Image from nextweb.]

Beatles storm iTunes charts on first day of sale

Within 24 hours of going on sale, Beatles songs already occupy 15% of iTunes UK's top 200.

[via The Guardian]

Music streaming seen boosting mobile sales-study

Mobile operators should ditch their music download stores and opt for partnerships with music streaming services if they want to generate more revenue and make customers stick, a study found, reports Reuters.

A typical Western European operator -- with 20 million customers -- could achieve revenue benefits of 77.7 million euros ($109 million) per year from new users, a rise in mobile data and smartphone sales according to a market research study released on Monday.

Read full article.

Related:

Music Streaming is a EUR 1.1 Bn Opportunity for European Operators in 2011

Large mobile operators could add millions of euros to their bottom line by partnering with a music streaming service, according to the findings of a research project between Informa Telecoms & Media and Spotify.

[via Cellular News]

mSpot Tops 500K Downloads In Two Months

Mobile entertainment startup mSpot has shared stats with TechCrunch about its free music cloud service that allows you sync your entire music collection across Android phones and PCs/Macs.

Since the service’s public launch in June, mSpot has seen 500,000 downloads of the streaming music app to Android phones.

Read full article.

iPhone Apps Overtaking Songs in Total Downloads

There's an interesting chart making its way around the Net this morning comparing the number of iTunes app downloads to the total downloads of songs. [via ReadWriteWeb]

The surprising reveal is that it shows apps are being downloaded much more rapidly than songs. In only 2.2 years, the iTunes App Store has reached the same total downloads as the iTunes Music Store did after five years. And before the year is out, the two curves on the chart will be around the same height - 13 billion downloads each.

Read full article.

1 in 5 US teenagers has slight hearing loss

According to a new study, one in five teens (i.e 6.5 million teens) has a slight hearing loss, and the problem has increased substantially in recent years. the AP reports.

Most of the hearing loss was "slight," defined as inability to hear at 16 to 24 decibels — or sounds such as a whisper or rustling leaves.

Some young people turn their digital players up to levels that would exceed federal workplace exposure limits, said Brian Fligor, an audiologist at Children's Hospital Boston. In Fligor's own study of about 200 New York college students, more than half listened to music at 85 decibels or louder. That's about as loud as a hair dryer or a vacuum cleaner.

Habitual listening at those levels can turn microscopic hair cells in the inner ear into scar tissue.

Read full article.

How Two Former Ringtone Giants Are Faring As That Market Crumbles

At the height of the ringtone business, carriers, music labels, artists and third party companies, like Jamba, Thumbplay and others, were making piles of easy money—selling a snippet of a song for three times what a whole track sells for today. John Fletcher, an analyst at SNL Kagan, said ringtone sales in the U.S. peaked in 2007 at $714 million, and today are closer to 2005 levels. “It’s been a depressing story for a couple of years.” As consumers have transitioned to smartphones, users can often load a full-track MP3 to their phone and designate a portion for a ringtone. [via PaidContent.org]

Fox Mobile and Thumbplay are two of the largest companies that specialized in ringtones and are now trying to reinvent themselves.

Read full article.

20% of British smartphone users listen to radio on their mobile phone

According to UK’s Radio Joint Audience Research (RAJAR), 20% of British smartphone owners, or 1.4 million people, have downloaded a radio app on their device.

Of those, over half (53%) use a radio app at least once a week; 54% select the station using specific FM preset while 14% run an app for a specific radio station.

[via IntoMobile]

Related: - Smartphone Apps: The New Transistor Radio

A year after his death Michael Jackson's ringtone sales

Michael Jackson's ringtone sales totaled 1.5 million in the United States alone a year after his death.

[Billboard via Gather]

Apple's iTunes lead increasing, now selling 26.7% of US music

According to a report published by Billboard, Apple's iTunes store, which emerged in 2008 as the top U.S. music account for the first time, widened its lead last year over former market leader Walmart.

[via AppleInsider]

Mobile Music Downloads Struggle to Make Headway

Fewer than 2 percent of mobile users in the United States and western Europe used their phone to download music in the first quarter, reports ABCNews.

Although 24 percent listened to music on their phone, the vast majority loaded the tracks on to their handset from music they already had on a computer, according to data from industry tracker comScore released on Wednesday.

Read full article.

Shazam Has Identified 1 Billion Songs To Date

According to TechCrunch, mobile music recognition and discovery company Shazam has identified more than one billion songs to date and has over 75 million members.

Women Download More Mobile Content?

According to i4U News, a Myxer a study on user purchasing habits found that women tend to overwhelmingly drive mobile media sales. The average woman on their site downloads 17% more items than the average man.

Download growth boosts 2009 UK music royalties

British songwriters, composers and music publishers earned 623 million pounds ($944.8 million) in royalties in 2009, up 2.6 percent on 2008 and the first time the growth in digital revenues outperformed the drop in CD and DVD earnings.

[Yahoo! News]

Ringtones - don't pay the price

According to Directgov, 37 per cent of 11 to 18 year olds have used music or video content on their phone in the last six months. But many are unaware of the charges for these services.

The findings were published by PhonepayPlus, the regulator for phone-paid services in the UK and an agency of Ofcom. They're running the 'PhoneBrain' campaign to help prevent students from being lured into paying premium rate charges.

Read full article.

Beyonce named top artist of the decade

R&B star Beyonce Knowles has emerged as the most successful musician of this century's first decade in America according to the RIAA. NDTV Movie reports.

The 28-year-old star has landed 64 gold and platinum certifications for sales of albums and videos and a further 19 for ringtones, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Read full article.

Australian Music Market Up 4.8% In 2009

According to Billboard, full-year 2009 trade figures by labels body ARIA show a 4.8% gain in wholesale revenue to $395 million, powered by a booming digital music sector and solid CD album sales.

That Australia's myriad digital channels provided the big highlights should come as no surprise. During a year which welcomed new arrivals in Nokia's Comes With Music and MySpace Music, Australia's digital music business in 2009 grew by 46% to $70 million).

Read full article.

Music's lost decade: Sales cut in half

At the end of last year, the music business was worth half of what it was ten years ago and the decline doesn't look like it will be slowing anytime soon. Money CNN reports.

Total revenue from U.S. music sales and licensing plunged to $6.3 billion in 2009, according to Forrester Research. In 1999, that revenue figure topped $14.6 billion.

... Now just 44% of U.S. Internet users and 64% of Americans who buy digital music think that that music is worth paying for, according to Forrester. The volume of unauthorized downloads continues to represent about 90% of the market, according to online download tracker BigChampagne Media Measurement.

The music industry has tried to keep up by licensing ringtones, licensing music on popular Internet radio stations like MySpace Music and Pandora and licensing music videos on YouTube. Digital licensing revenue reached $84 million in 2009, and it is expected to grow substantially in the coming year.

Read full artilce.

Ringtones' requiem

Customized cellphone rings are so 2004. But the music industry has a new source of revenue – it's all about the ringback tone, according to Fortune Brainstorm Tech.

U.S. ringtone revenue this year will reach about $750 million, down from $881 million in 2007 — and the business will be nonexistent in 2016, says IBIS World, a consumer analyst group.

...But the music industry, which reaped great rewards charging $3 for 15 seconds of content, still hopes to milk the mobile market for revenue even as ringtones fade. The ringback tone (a song that plays for inbound callers instead of a ringing signal) has seen tremendous growth. Ringback revenue has more than doubled since 2005, and it brought in almost $200 million for music labels last year, according to analyst group SNL Kagan.

Read full article.

Mariah Carey "All I Want For Christmas Is You" Ringtone

Mariah Carey and Legacy Recordings are celebrating the 15th anniversary of Mariah's contemporary yuletide classic "All I Want For Christmas Is You" with the digital release of brand new dance mixes of the track and new holiday ringtones will be available on Tuesday, November 24, 2009.

"All I Want For Christmas Is You," has been America's #1 holiday ringtone for the past three consecutive holiday seasons (2006, 2007, 2008), reaching cumulative sales of more than 1.6 million copies.

Press release.