Paid digital downloads soared in the decade after the iTunes Music Store was introduced in 2003, but they've now leveled off: As this chart from CNN shows, sales of CDs peaked around the turn of the century and have been steadily declining since then. Globally, downloads declined by 8 percent in 2014.ĭigital downloads appear to be on the same trajectory as CDs, only with a 15-year lag. In 2014, revenues from music streaming services surged, but paid song downloads in the US actually fell by 12 percent. But that's not how things have worked out. Music purchases are decliningĪs recently as 2012, analysts were predicting that paid music downloads would continue growing - albeit slowly - for the foreseeable future. But it's now clear that they were just an awkward transitional stage between the physical formats of the 20th century and the streaming media services that will dominate in the future. These services are rendering traditional music ownership obsolete.Ī decade ago, the iPod and iTunes seemed like the wave of the future. Smartphones allow something much better: services that allow unlimited streaming of millions of songs. Customers don't want to buy music, and they don't want to build music collections.

Apple was at the forefront of that change, with Steve Jobs convincing record labels to sell their songs for just 99 cents.īut we now know that this whole way of thinking about the music business was wrong. A decade ago, it was widely assumed that people would build collections of digital music just as they previously built collections of records and CDs. Apple's decision to create a new streaming service called Apple Music is a recognition of just how much the music business has changed over the past decade.

How to purchase music on itunes