The RIAA Saw A Sales Increase This Year

Our opinion on what, precisely, is killing the music industry is something we’ve made very clear in the past. And, whaddaya know, here comes the RIAA, with its latest figures, to prove it really is a flawed business model, and not piracy.

The spreadsheet they put together is interesting reading, not least because it acknowledges something they really, really don’t want to discuss, namely that, with no piracy controls in place, no SOPA or PIPA, they’ve now seen revenue growth, however modest, for two straight years.

Reports Ars Technica:

There’s no decisive reason cited for this growth, but certainly a number of likely factors exist. Subscription music services increased their revenue 13.5 percent, supporting the popularity of services like Spotify or Rdio. Music downloads also increased, both in singles (13.3 percent revenue increase) and albums (25.1 percent).

It also shows why they hate digital albums: the industry still makes a lot of money selling CDs to your mom. So, we’re just going to ride this physical media thing into the ground, huh, guys?

(Image via swanksalot on Flickr)

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