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Editors Note: AliveTampaBay looks back to June 25, 2017 about how the tech sector impacted the global music industry.
By David R. Wheeler, Editor
The global music industry has plummeted from a high of $45 billion in revenue in 2000 to $15 billion today.
Take a guess why that happened.
No, really. Guess.
It’s the same thing that happened to newspapers: the tech sector turned the business model upside down, and it’s never been the same.
Things are so bad for musicians that they’re actually making more from the sale of old-fashioned vinyl albums than from online streaming services such as Apple Music or Spotify.
This phenomenon is explored in a new book by Jonathan Taplin called Move Fast and Break Things. The University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business reviewed the book on their blog: “In his book, part memoir and part manifesto calling for content creators to embrace antimonopoly, Taplin examines the contradictions embedded in today’s digital economy—in which YouTube makes $9 billion in annual revenues, but artists earn more from the sales of vinyl records than online streaming—through the lens of antitrust and the history of monopoly in the U.S.”
While content creators figure out how to make money in the digital economy, musicians might do well to consider releasing their album on vinyl. It’s a physical object, and there are still a few people left who will pay for physical objects.