Music is finally making more money than it was in 2007! Its been a long decade since the decrease of attention to music.  According to Rolling stones, IFPI reports show the fourth consecutive year of growth in global music sales, with $19.1 billion revenue in 2018. Streaming revenues are on the rise. They are up a surprising 34 percent from 2017 to 2018. Paid and subscription streaming also rose a staggering 33 percent.

Old forms of music, such as CDs, have dipped 10 percent, and digital downloads fell 21 percent. It seems that the times are changing, digital sales of music (referring to paid streaming, free streaming, and downloads) have reached the $10 billion mark for the first time ever.

This last year, U2 has reported Earnings of up to $54.4 million, which is a crazy amount of money for music that isn’t even mainstream anymore.  Billboard reports show that Ed Sheeran’s ‘Divide’ tour grossed more than $429 million in 99 shows all over the world. Sheeran has set a new year-end record in Billboard’s Boxscore, which has been running since 1990, beating The Rolling Stones’ record of $425.1 million for their 2006 ‘A Bigger Bang’ tour.

Spotify just released the most-streamed artist’s list and it’s not surprising to see that what the younger generation is listing and what leads the list. The most streamed artist was Drake, thanks to his Scorpion album, followed by Post Malone, and late rapper XXXTentacion who passed away June 18th, 2018.

We talked to music lover Chris Thelen about the growth of music today. He weighed in on the topic saying, “In today’s world you can really see the money in the music industry. Through social media, music is more connected than ever to other forms of media and a lot of the young artists are using that to their advantage.”