Canada’s recording and music publishing industry grew by more than 21% in 2017. That’s not a typo.
It wasn’t all that long ago that the recording music industry was in full panic mode. Piracy was rampant, CD sales were cratering, and there was this new thing called streaming threatened its hundred-year-old business model of selling pieces of plastic to the public.
Turns out that streaming was the industry’s saviour. After a lot of bloodletting and pivoting, the majority of label revenues are now coming from streaming–and business is really good.
According to Statistics Canada (via FYIMusicNews.ca), revenues by the recording music and music publishing industries were up 21.1% in 2017 for a total of $1.1 billion. Of that, about $176 million came from streaming. Yes, this is for 2017, but StatsCan is a little behind.
Here are more highlights:
- Music publishers saw growth of over 30% in 2017.
- Recording studios saw revenues rise by over 6%.
- Margins improved pretty much across the board.
Again, this data is more than a year old. Last year was even better than 2017.
