Is the recorded music industry still viable?

DuckToller · March 12, 2020

49 minutes ago, Allan F said:

Then Steve Jobs opened iTunes and others followed, allowing people to buy individual songs rather than complete albums

Allan,

how many people have you met that have filled up their 240 GB IPOD (2007) with music from the ITunes only???
In my opinion, Mr. Job's technololgy was THE enabler for making piracy valuable to customers because you had already paid a high price to Apple and
If you had bought 1000 songs on iTunes for a grand, you may have only used 1/200th of its capacity.
The labels made this deal for having a chance to enter into digital distribution, however at that point they paid the price of ignoring their customer base and the consumer's needs for almost 2 decades. They still suffer from their strategic faults in the CD era. YMMV
Best, DT

DuckToller · March 12, 2020

1 hour ago, Allan F said:

And, of course, today we have streaming.

This is absolutely correct, imho.
There are two generations todays (teens and twens) that are not very familiar with piracy, because they have the easy access to everything they want in the cloud. If I look at my sons environment, that's looks like the majority.
When Napster (which is, here in France, the streaming offer my teenage son uses since 3 years!) was introduced 1999, these age groups were the drivers for the misery of the music industry.

DuckToller · March 13, 2020

1 hour ago, Allan F said:

If there is such a case, John, I suspect that it is limited to the audiophile community. You have to remember that, both historically and currently, the largest group of purchasers of music is composed of young people. Today, for the vast majority, their prime vehicle for listening to music is via their phones. While differences in the sound quality of recordings are important to you and members of this community, that is sadly not the case for those young people who have been weaned on MP3. There are exceptions of course but, IMO, not likely in sufficient numbers to generally justify reworking catalogues.

Unfortunately, your assessment of today's teen generation's way to enjoy music is spot on.
I would tend to disagree on the younger generation as generators of value apart of paid streaming services.
I may see the generations 35+ as the major contributors to the sales of individual units of music (DL/CD+/Vinyl) in terms of value.
The 2020 IFPI report for 2019 will come End of March, the 2019 reports contains the following information, though it is not adjusted to the spendings.