The decline in worldwide recorded-music revenues slowed last year as more people subscribed to online services. The proportion of sales from digital destinations equaled those from physical formats for the first time.
Global revenue for the industry, whose best-selling album was the movie soundtrack to the film Frozen, fell 0.4 per cent to $14.97 billion last year, with declining downloads and physical sales, according to a group representing music labels.
Read also:
• Jay Z, Madonna, Minaj among owners of new streaming service
• Taylor Swift shuns Spotify
At the same time, music-streaming sites helped boost digital sales by 6.9 per cent and Japan, the world's second-largest music market, registered digital growth for the first time in five years, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry said on Tuesday in a statement.
The growth in digital sales was welcomed by an industry that's spent at least the past decade trying to counter drops in demand for CDs and the closing of record shops worldwide.