Streaming music is officially a bigger business than download sales in the US for the first time according to new figures released today by the Recording Industry Association of America.
If current trends continue, streaming will surpass digital downloads as the biggest single source of revenue for the music industry by next year.
Streaming currently accounts for about one-third of overall spending on music, totalling a little more than $1 billion for the first six months of the year, with the shift toward streaming likely to accelerate further.
This year has seen increased competition for streaming services with the introduction of both Apple Music, Jay Z's launch of Tidal and Amazon's entry into the market in a bid to compete with the likes of Spotify, Rhapsody, Rdio, Deezer and Google Music.
Meanwhile sales of CDs in the US dropped by almost a third in the first half of 2015. Taylor Swift's 1989 was the biggest-selling album in the first half of 2015, shifting 1.3 million copies.
The RIAA's chairman, Cary Sherman, said that the figures showed "the story of a business undergoing an enormous transition."
