Taylor Swift Won The Battle, But Spotify Won The War

CDs, sadly, do go out of style.

For the first time in history, streaming services have overtaken CD sales in America. This despite Taylor Swift’s one-woman war against Spotify.

A report released by the Recording Industry Association of America shows that of the US$6.97 billion generated by the music industry in 2014, 27 per cent came from streaming services like Spotify and Pandora.

Digital downloads continue to lead the market by generating 37 per cent of the industry’s revenue.

Though this marks the fourth year of wholesale growth for the industry, overall revenue remains flat, and a far cry from the 1999 high point, in which recorded music grossed US$14.6 billion.

Swift made news late last year by refusing to share her latest album, 1989, on Spotify, over the lacklustre royalties offered. Then, following, a needy request by the streaming service to just let them have it, she pulled her back-catalogue entirely.

The 25-year-old has little reason to fear the ascent of streaming, however. More than four million copies of 1989 have been sold since its release in October of 2014, making it one of the highest selling albums of the decade so far.

Most other artists, however, doesn’t have monster singles like “Shake It Off” and “Blank Space” to leverage against streaming giants, and have to play ball, no matter how lame the royalties.

This week, Kendrick Lamar set a new Spotify record for the most streams in a single day (9.6 million) following the surprise release of his latest album, To Pimp A Butterfly.

It’ll be interesting to see how this effects actual sales of his album over the next few days.

How do you prefer to purchase music?