According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the recording industry in the United States earned $7.69 billion in the first half of 2022. This figure reflects a relatively modest annual growth of about 9.07 percent.
RIAA officials presented today the results of the US music industry for the first half of 2022 in a brief report that was emailed to Digital Music News. First of all, it should be clarified that the trade organization calculated the above amount taking into account the “retail value” or “the cost of shipments at the recommended or estimated list price”.
Needless to say, however, the evidence and logic suggest that some products were eventually sold at a price below the “recommended or estimated list price”, which means that the revenue of the domestic music recording industry in the first half of 2022 may actually be lower than the aforementioned retail value. (“Formats that are not equivalent to retail value” are “included in the wholesale cost,” the RIAA clarifies.)
In any case, streaming still accounted for the lion’s share of the total, which, according to the RIAA, amounted to $6.47 billion over six months.
The amount shows an improvement of 9.60% year-on-year, but the share of streaming in the total revenue of the music industry in the amount of $ 7.69 billion remained unchanged compared to the first half of 2021 and amounted to approximately 84%. (Of course, the corresponding major label earnings reports reflect a broader digital slowdown in 2022.)
The document shows that $5.03 billion in streaming revenue for the first half of 2022 came from paid subscriptions, which include $525 million in “limited-tier” packages, such as packages on Amazon Prime, and “music licenses for digital fitness apps.” percent compared to 25.69 percent in the first half of 2020 and the first half of 2021.
However, in the six months ended June 30, 2022, there were an average of 90 million subscribers in the U.S. to on-demand streaming services, compared with 82 million or so in the first half of 2021.
(Each multi-user plan is classified as a single subscription, and for further reference: this figure increased from 72.6 million to 82 million in the first half of 2021. In addition, Spotify reported 188 million paid users in the second quarter of 2022, of which of these subscribers live in North America.)
The remaining $1.5 billion that streaming is said to have declined during the first half of 2022 was partly generated by advertising-supported users (on platforms such as Spotify and YouTube, as well as social services such as TikTok and Facebook), amounting to $871.5 million.
(Since the music featured in TikTok and related apps syncs fairly directly with visual media, some have called for the associated revenue to be classified as syncing, with U.S. royalties totaling only $178 million in the first half of 2022 according to the RIAA classification.)
Rounding out the streaming side, the breakdown points to $566.4 million in revenue from “digital and customizable radio services” compared to $584.8 million in the first half of 2021. album and ringtone categories, the total decrease was 19.08% and reached a total revenue of $256.2 million.
Finally, according to the analysis, the recorded music market in the United States earned 780.8 million dollars (an increase of 13.29% year-on-year) from physical releases during the first half of 2022, as CD sales fell (only 199.7 million dollars, by 2.25% year-on-year), but vinyl jumped another 22.23%. 570.2 million dollars. According to the RIAA, vinyl currently accounts for almost three-quarters of the physical sales of recorded music in the United States.
