Streaming media services have grown by 54%, and the subversive or savior?

January 3 news, according to foreign media reports, Apple's acquisition of streaming media services company BeatsMusic has become a major event in the field of music sales, once again shows that the industry is beginning to transform from traditional digital music and album sales.

According to Nielsen SoundScan's report released at the end of the year in the music industry this week, the on-demand streaming music and video music content business has grown by 54%. In 2014, the streaming music on demand reached 164 billion, up from 106 billion in 2013. Times. While streaming media services are growing, traditional digital albums and music sales are declining. The number of digital music album sales fell by 9% to 117.6 billion in 2014, while the number of singles sales dropped 6% to 1.26 billion. In 2014, the sales of albums, including entities and figures, fell by 11% to 257 million.

In 2014, the only record album to achieve sales growth was 52%, and the sales volume reached 9.2 million. This format accounted for 6% of all physical album sales. The sales volume of vinyl records has grown continuously in the past nine years, and its growth in 2014 was the best since 1991. In 1991, Nielsen Music Statistics tracked music sales for the first time. "The consumption of digital music has maintained its strong growth, with on-demand streaming media services increasing by 54% last year and music streaming being broadcasted to 164 billion times," said David Bakula, vice president of industry research at Nielsen Entertainment. ) said, "Although all music sales have declined, vinyl albums still increased by 52% in 2014."

Nielsen’s research highlights the importance of Apple’s acquisition of BeatsMusic last May, which brought the iPhone maker into the booming paid music market. It is expected that Apple will use iTunes and BeatsMusic to snatch this market. Apple will use BeatsMusic as an iOS application and upgrade it earlier this year. This will help Apple better compete with Spotify, a leading streaming media service. Currently, Spotify has more users.

There are signs that Apple may abandon the BeatsMusic brand and incorporate it into Apple iTunes. Prior to being acquired by Apple, BeatsMusic was not doing well. As of March of last year, there were only 110,000 paid users. But after the acquisition, BeatsMusic's business situation is not yet clear. However, there are reports that Apple hopes to increase BeatsMusic's number of subscriptions by reducing its monthly payment price to $5. Currently, BeatsMusic offers streaming media music services for a monthly subscription price of $ 9.99. However, if users are willing to subscribe for one year service, they only need to pay $99.99.