As the global music business faces an apparent slowdown — amid a pandemic — one unlikely market is emerging as a bigger revenue driver than ever.
In 2019, recorded-music-industry revenue increased 8.2% — a figure that sounds substantial, but that nonetheless left some analysts and executives fretting that the business' streaming-fueled growth rocket might now be coming down to earth.
After four years of booming expansion, last year's gains were down 1.5 percentage points from the 9.7% growth that IFPI reported for 2018.
And that was before the coronavirus pandemic halted touring, shuttered record stores and convinced some of the world's biggest artists to postpone releasing music.