The US recorded music business saw revenues grow for the eighth successive year in 2023, with all indications thus far being that 2024 will continue that trend.
Matthew Bass, the RIAA’s vice president, research and gold & platinum operations, told Music Ally that 2024 is “positioned to be another strong year for recorded music in the US, with paid subscriptions contributing the most to growth and labels continuing find new ways to reach artists’ fans”.
Interviewed for our latest country profile, Bass referred to the RIAA’s annual figures, which showed growth from paid subscriptions accelerating in 2023 – up 9% to $11.2bn.
As we reported at the time, an average of 96.8 million Americans were subscribing to on-demand music-streaming services in 2023.
However, the 96.8m figure does not include “limited-tier” subscription services (those limited by factors like mobile access, catalogue availability and product features – think Amazon Prime Music and Pandora Plus); and multi-user plans are counted as a single subscription.
The RIAA does not have detailed insight into the number of subscribers to these limited-tier subscription services but Bass estimates that, overall, more than 100 million people in the US have access to a [subscription] music streaming service.
A2IM boss Richard James Burgess was also interviewed for the profile, and offered some context (and caveats) for the growth.
“Is the US market performing well? Relatively speaking the answer is yes,” he said. “I always want to point out that by adjusted dollars we are not back to 1999 numbers, but the growth is healthy even though the growth rate is slowing a little.”
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