Mitch Glazier
Today we are releasing U.S. recorded music revenue data for the first half of 2023, reflecting 9.3% growth over the first half of 2022 — the ninth straight year of positive growth.
With overall first-half revenues hitting an all-time high of $8.4 billion at retail value and paid streaming subscriptions nearing 96 million, this report makes clear the strength of American recorded music’s fundamentals.
For example, this new data shows broad strength across formats — especially digital streaming, which now comprises some 84% of recorded music revenues and grew at a robust 10.3% rate this period. Looking solely at paid streaming subscriptions, that figure climbs to 11%.
In fact, paid subscription services were responsible for nearly two-thirds of total revenues and more than three-quarters of streaming revenues. And they continued to grow at an even faster rate than ad-supported revenues.
But it’s not only streaming; the new data also show the lasting power of physical formats — which grew by 5% — including growth in the value of sales of CDs and vinyl. Overall, physical revenues reached their highest level since a full decade ago, topping $880 million so far this year.
And digital and customized radio music revenues, which include SoundExchange distributions for revenues from services like SiriusXM and internet radio stations, grew 16% to $657 million for the period.
As we’re fond of saying, “Music doesn’t just happen.” This success reflects the hard work, innovation, and creative genius of the artists, songwriters, labels, publishers, and services that make up the U.S. music community.
Finally, with annual Latin music revenues in the U.S. exceeding $1 billion for the first time in 2022 and the first half of 2023 showing continued growth faster than overall revenues, Latin music continues to shine — both economically and creatively. We look forward to releasing a full report on the Latin segment during Hispanic Heritage Month and as a capstone to our upcoming RIAA Honors Celebration of Latin music where we will recognize legends Gloria and Emilio Estefan, superstar Sebastián Yatra and other Latin music trailblazers as well as the policymakers who protect it all.
RIAA is proud to develop and release this transparent data which shows the continued power and vitality of U.S. recorded music.
Mitch Glazier is chairman/CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America.
In 1994, at the dawn of the internet era, Rolling Stone asked Steve Jobs if he still had faith in technology. “It’s not a faith in technology,” he responded. “It’s faith in people.”
Today, at the dawn of the artificial intelligence era, we put our faith in people too.
It’s hard to think of an issue that has exploded onto the public scene with the furor of the debate over AI, which went from obscure technology journals to national morning shows practically overnight. This week, Congress is convening the first two of what will surely be many hearings on the issue, including one with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and another with musician, voice actor and SAG-AFTRA National Board member Dan Navarro.
As members of the global Human Artistry Campaign, made up of more than 100 organizations that represent a united, worldwide coalition of the creative arts, we welcome this open and active debate. It’s gratifying to see policymakers, industry, and our own creative community asking tough questions up front. It’s a lot easier to chart a course in advance than to play catch up from afterward.
We don’t have long to get this right, either. The internet is already awash in unlicensed and unethical “style” and “soundalike” tools that rip off the writing, voice, likeness and style of professional artists and songwriters without authorization or permission. Powerful new engines like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Jukebox, Google’s MusicLM and Microsoft’s AI-powered Bing have been trained on vast troves of musical compositions, lyrics, and sound recordings — as well as every other type of data and information available on the internet — without even the most basic transparency or disclosure, let alone consent from the creators whose work is being used. Songwriters, recording artists, and musicians today are literally being forced to compete against AI programs trained on copies of their own compositions and recordings.
RIAA Chairman/CEO Mitch Glazier
Othello Banaci
We strongly support AI that can be used to enhance art and stretch the potential of human creativity even further. Technology has always pushed art forward, and AI will be no different.
At the same time, however, human artistry must and will always remain at the core of genuine creation. The basis of creative expression is the sharing of lived experiences — an artist-to-audience/audience-to-artist connection that forms our culture and identity.
Without a rich supply of human-created works, there would be nothing on which to train AI in the first place. And if we don’t lay down a policy foundation now that respects, values and compensates the unique genius of human creators, we will end up in a cultural cul-de-sac, feeding AI-generated works back into the engines that produced them in a costly and ultimately empty race to the artistic bottom.
That policy foundation must start with the core value of consent. Use of copyrighted works to train or develop AI must be subject to free-market licensing and authorization from all rights holders. Creators and copyright owners must retain exclusive control over the ways their work is used. The moral invasion of AI engines that steal the core of a professional performer’s identity — the product of a lifetime’s hard work and dedication — without permission or pay cannot be tolerated.
David Israelite
Courtesy of NMPA
This will require AI developers to ensure copyrighted training inputs are approved and licensed, including those used by pre-trained AIs they employ. It means they need to keep thorough and transparent records of the creative works and likenesses used to train AI systems and how they were exploited. These obligations are nothing new, though — anyone who uses another creator’s work or a professional’s voice, image or likeness must already ensure they have the necessary rights and maintain the records to prove it.
Congress is right to bring in AI developers like Sam Altman to hear the technology community’s vision for the future of AI and explore the safeguards and guardrails the industry is relying on today. The issues around the rapid deployment of novel AI capabilities are numerous and profound: data privacy, deepfakes, bias and misinformation in training sets, job displacement and national security.
Creators will be watching and listening closely for concrete, meaningful commitments to the core principles of permission and fair market licensing that are necessary to sustain songwriters and recording artists and drive innovation.
We have already seen some of what AI can do. Now it falls to us to insist that it be done in ethical and lawful ways. Nothing short of our culture — and, over time, our very humanity — is at stake.
David Israelite is the President & CEO of the National Music Publishers’ Association. NMPA is the trade association representing American music publishers and their songwriting partners.
Mitch Glazier is chairman/CEO of the RIAA, the trade organization that supports and promotes the creative and financial vitality of the major recorded-music companies.
Lincoln said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” It was true then and it’s true today — on great issues like politics and governance and, closer to home, for America’s music community.
We know the costs of division and mistrust. During the Napster era, we lost nearly half the revenue from recorded music. Working together over the last 10 years, we’ve built a robust and thriving streaming economy well on its way to recovering what was lost. But we still have a long way to go.
From powerful platforms that undervalue music to short-sighted attacks on creators’ rights around the world to abuses of new technologies that attack the very idea of human authorship — it’s more important than ever that we unite to face new challenges in 2023 and beyond.
And we know how to do it.
In recent years, the music industry has joined together over and over again to accomplish great things and move music forward.
In 2018, we enacted “once-in-a-generation” Music Modernization Act legislation here in the U.S. to update streaming rights for songwriters and ensure legacy artists are finally paid. We are now working together to protect artists’ free expression through bills like California’s Decriminalizing Artistic Expression Act and the federal RAP Act.
In 2021, we saw a landmark Copyright Directive in the European Union to strengthen music markets and fair pay for artists on all platforms.
Earlier this year, all three major record labels decided to voluntarily disregard unrecouped balances owed by certain legacy performers ensuring these great artists could immediately share in streaming royalties.
And of course, we supported one another through a devastating pandemic, working to sustain small venues and develop public policies and relief programs to reach working artists and songwriters.
Those were all major steps, but new challenges keep coming — including some designed to stoke division and turn our community against itself. Fortunately, we know from our many recent achievements that the music community — and music itself — does best when we stick together in the face of common challenges. Especially at a time when American music is already thriving — across formats, styles, and all around the world with competition, creativity and choice all stronger than ever.
Artists continued to find new ways to reach more fans than ever with do-it-yourself recording and distribution, while independent labels have become the fastest-growing sector of the market. In a shrinking online world where language and geography are no longer barriers, an artist’s potential audience has become almost limitless.
In this dynamic new music business, success is more broadly shared than ever, with growing opportunities and revenues for indie artists and the very top acts taking a smaller share of revenues today than during the CD era. Globally, out of a $10 per month streaming subscription, artists receive roughly $1.35 while labels net $0.55 once the cost of spending to drive artists’ success is accounted for. Meanwhile, the share of revenues going to publishers and songwriters has nearly doubled in the streaming era.
It’s a powerful testament to what all of us who make up the music community have built together.
It is success borne first from the blood, sweat and tears of America’s creators — artists, songwriters, session players and the legions of those who support and distribute music — producers, publishers, road crews and venue operators, tour support, managers, digital services and more.
It is also the product of round-the-clock drive and commitment by the people working at record labels– music lovers who wake up every day fighting for the artists they work with and helping them achieve their creative dreams and commercial goals. From marketing and promotion to brand and design to social media campaigns to wellness and health to business and back office services, labels today do more than ever to support artists and position them to break new ground and thrive.
The labels that make up the RIAA are committed to a future of continued shared growth. We are determined to keep pushing for even more positive change. And we will work every day in this new year to unite our music community with forward-looking policies and goals that benefit artists, songwriters and fans as well as rightsholders and music services.
That means standing together and ensuring creators get full value for their work on every platform, service, game, fitness app and anywhere else it is used — from AM/FM radio to the metaverse. It also means building on shared commitments to diversity, wellness, and equality — both inside and outside the recording studio and across our entire community.
Additionally, it means presenting a united front when tackling the next generation of challenges, including artificial intelligence, where artists, songwriters, labels and publishers have an immense and shared interest in establishing responsible rules of the road that value human authorship and creativity. Also important is fighting against new forms of music piracy and other efforts to undermine the creative economy, from stream ripping to stream manipulation to pre-release leaks that suck the economic value out of the most seminal times in an artist’s career.
All of us who make up this community are bound together by a shared love of music — and a shared commitment to the people who create, distribute, and listen to it.
In 2023, let’s work — together — to turn those values into concrete action that builds a rich and lasting music future for us all.
Mitch Glazier is the Chairman and CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the trade organization that supports and promotes the creative and financial vitality of the recorded major music companies.
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