15 years of Spotify: How the streaming giant has changed and reinvented the music industry

How completely has streaming transformed the music world? The platform rose from 7% of the US market in 2010 to a whopping 83% by the end of 2020 – and recorded-music revenues saw their fifth consecutive year of growth, topping US$12.2bil (RM50.37bil), per the RIAA. — AFP Relaxnews

LOS ANGELES: Ask any executive what the music business was like in the ‘00s and their face may take on an expression more commonly associated with narrowly averted disasters like car accidents or, more accurately, attempted robberies.

Due to peer-to-peer file-sharing platforms like Napster and Limewire, US recorded-music revenues lost more than half their value in the early years of the 21st century, falling precipitously from an all-time high of US$14.6bil (RM60.29bil) in 1999 to US$6.7bil (RM27.67bil) in 2014 and 2015 (according to the Recording Industry Association of America or RIAA) as songs transitioned from being sold on a physical object like a CD or vinyl to becoming a sound file that could be easily – and illegally – distributed for free. Piracy ran rampant as the music industry failed to come to grips with how quickly and drastically its world had changed. While iTunes brought some stability to a business model in freefall, in essence an entire generation grew up believing that it didn’t have to pay for music.