RIAA changes metrics of retail revenue in wholesale: what do I know

For decade, the Association of Recording Industry of America (RIAA) performed several important tasks, including advocacy on behalf of the recorded music industry at Capitol Hill and protect the interests of stickers in court cases and legal issues across the country.

His other vital task: reporting the income of the American industry twice a year – closely viewed metrics indicating the health of recorded music business in the United States. For years, RIAA retained a database on its website that has reached the retail value for the entire business, as well as breached format – vinyl, CD, cassette and digital sales, as well as transfer revenues, and tied and trailers. These numbers, many, are famous for the heart of the 1999. year – the height of the CD in color – revenues reached $ 14.6 billion, before digital piracy took the industry on the knees. And in their innermost in 2014. year, the industry last reached the decay of the year, to 6.7 billion dollars, before streaming finally started pulling him back to grow.

Those known figures for the entire job are reported on retail values, and they tried to riaa and used as short for health, or stagnation, decades. At the end of each of his reports, and at the end of the year and at the end of the year, Riaa would then broke out numerous data on income for each of these basic metrics, which enabled the analysis of trends and consumer habits in a year. For many years, RIAA would also include another figure, which is often presented as subsequent revenues of industry at wholesale values, or numbers that have received labels, and not the consumers paid. That number was never broken by a single format and was often just one sentence in a longer report.

At the middle of 2025, however, RIAA decided to take full care in retail value, representing each metric only in wholesale values. The data is generally smaller than retail revenues – which reflect the prices of the consumers – and RIAA says that this change is more in line with other IFPI music report, which reports to Global Music IFPI, which reports to global music IFPI.

For that First half of 2025At wholesale values, American business recorded $ 5.6 billion in revenue in all formats, increased by 0.9%, from 0.9% of the Processor of 2024, and transferring revenues in the amount of $ 4.68 billion, or 84% overall. Within this, the paid subscription revenue consisted of $ 3.2 billion, on an increase of 5.7% processing and once more accounting for the most income for US business, which has been overturning in 2015 since 2015.

The problem is that this change – which RIAA has not previously announced – changes the growth of industry that the organization itself in which the organization has processed more than decades of reporting on retail values. Further, because the individual sales and streaming meters never broke in wholesale values ​​- and other metrics are no longer in comparison, which, which was, which Riaa, which was RIAA, which Riaa was in the last year, meant Riaa performed in progress Last year, which was reported by Riaa in last year, which means that Riaa was for last year, which means that Riaa, for example, could no longer be executed, which Riaa’s, which Riaa used it, which Riaa used. (Data are available on country only within the annual Premium IFPI reports, which cost north of $ 20,000.)

The RIAA digital database, which contained those revenue digits according to the 1974 format, also no longer exists on its website. Said said to organize Bilbord It is in the process of updating this database with wholesale numbers and will be re-available when RIAA releases its full-year data for 2025. Year, which is generally in the spring of next year.

Thus, with these data, there are no more metrics that many in the industry often rely on now, according to RIA, Bilbord He compared two tickets to compare retail wholesale in relation to the last decade. To do this, we used RIAA-A-year reports (with updated meters where it is available; RIAA will often revise previous years in future reports on future reports), both at the middle end of the stamp and the indicated year. Although there is no data to assess trends historically at wholesale, these charts will at least help to conceptualize a retail decline at a comprehensive level, until RIAA provides more information.