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Digital download sales are likely to increase again in 2013. But by one measure, downloads actually peaked in 2011. Download sales accounted for 73% of digital revenues in 2011 and fell to 70% last year, according to annual shipments tracked by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).   Not that download sales have declined over the years. Track and digital album sales have each grown every year since the RIAA began reporting them in 2004. As a percent of total revenue -- counting both physical and digital revenue as well as synchronization royalties -- download sales rose to 40% from 36% in 2011; 31% in 2010; and 24% in 2009.   Nor have download sales declined in dollars. In fact, annual download sales continue to grow each year. Track and album sales grew by $235 million last year and gained a combined $912 million in the three-year period of 2010 through 2012. Download revenue is likely to grow again in 2013 by very low single digits.   Yet new business models are eating into downloads' dominance. Services such as Spotify, Pandora and SiriusXM grew by $405 million in 2012 and $1.22 billion in the three-year period of 2010 through 2012 -- both much higher than downloads' gains. Another key factor: download sales growth has almost stalled this year after years of double-digit gains.   But downloads' grip on digital revenues will ease over time because subscription and streaming services are experiencing high growth rates. Subscription and streaming services grew by 69% and 59% in 2011 and 2012, respectively. Royalties from services that pay royalties to SoundExchange -- such as Pandora, iHeartRadio and SiriusXM -- grew by 58% last year.    The market is clearly shifting toward streaming services. The numbers suggest we may be beyond the tipping point.

Grammy Voter Guide 2014

With the Grammys a few short weeks away, Billboard.biz has everything you need for music's biggest night (and week) -- analysis of all the major nominees, a letter from editorial director Bill Werde, behind the scenes with the telecast's longtime producer Ken Ehrlich and much, much more.

How Ashamed Should You Feel About Using Spotify?

In June, David Lowery, singer-guitarist of Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven, posted part of a royalty statement to his blog The Trichordist. Cracker's song "Low," he revealed, had been played 1,159,000 times on Pandora in three months; Lowery, in his capacity as the song’s co-composer, was paid $16.89. For 116,280 plays on Spotify, Lowery got $12.05. Meanwhile, "Low" racked up only 18,797 plays on AM and FM radio stations during the same quarter. But for far fewer spins, Lowery received far more money: $1,373.78, to be exact.

Just last month, Thom Yorke of Radiohead and producer Nigel Godrich pulled their Atoms for Peace project off of Spotify, citing similar inequities in how music-streaming services pay artists. "Make no mistake new artists you discover on #Spotify will [not] get paid,” Yorke declared on Twitter. “[M]eanwhile shareholders will shortly [be] rolling in it. Simples."

Maybe. Or maybe it's not quite as simples as that. The image of wide-eyed young musicians having their lunches eaten by rapacious corporations is pretty compelling, and the ongoing collapse of the record business makes it look even scarier. The week ending July 28 had the lowest total album sales documented since Billboard started using Soundscan to track sales in 1991.

But it's also worth considering who's paying whom when music gets streamed, and how that might change. Whenever you read a shockingly low number and worry about the fate of your favorite band, it's worth keeping three things in mind.

1) "The music business" is not the same thing as "the recorded music business"—especially for musicians. A recent survey by the Future of Music Coalition found that, on average, 6 percent of musicians' income comes from sound recordings. That's not an insignificant amount, but it's also a lot less than what nonmusicians might guess. (And, although there isn't reliable data from the pre-Napster era, anecdotal evidence suggests that the percentage has never been much higher.) Recordings are how listeners generally spend the most time experiencing music, but not how we spend the most money experiencing music. In practice, recordings mostly serve as promotion for the other ways musicians make money: performing, most of all, but also salaries for playing in orchestras and other groups, session work, and so on.  

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