In Saturday’s (11/30) TechRadar, Carrie Marshall writes, “Music is now a bigger business than cinema and vinyl is about to overtake CDs. That’s according to a new report by Spotify’s former chief economist, who’s been tracking the value of the music business for a decade. Will Page has spent ten years calculating the value of music copyrights and performing rights, which are the rights that generate payments when music is pressed onto records, streamed over Spotify or played on the radio. And the value of those copyrights has increased from $25 billion in 2014 to $45.5 billion now. The movie business, by comparison, is a $33.2 billion business. While music has soared, movies have declined … Music revenues aren’t necessarily going to artists—most of the music money goes to multiple middlemen; not all musicians who play music wrote it, and writing music is where the most valuable copyrights are … In the US alone, Page says, vinyl will bring in $1 billion for record labels in 2024. That means vinyl revenues are about to overtake CDs, not just in the US but globally…. Digital streaming, unsurprisingly, is now exceeding radio and other broadcasting.”
