Apple iTunes Sales Drop as Streaming Sales Rise

A new report shows that streaming sales have now surpassed digital downloads for the first time. Is this the end of digital downloads?

"The Recording Industry Association of America has revealed that streaming music sales surpassed digital downloads as the recording industry's single biggest source of revenue last year," according to a recent press release.

"According to a report from the association, streaming generated $2.4 billion in 2015 and contributed 34.3% of overall sales."

Despite the costs of streaming music through mobile devices without Wi-Fi. Streaming services are flourishing as they offer full libraries and discographies from the artist.

Instead of carrying around a separate device to play your music, you can have it all in one platform.

Connectivity in vehicles are also enabling some buyers to take the leap and stream music through their speakers rather than popping in a disc or downloading the album onto an iPod.

"One of the key factors behind this growth is the increased integration of streaming applications with social media platforms such as Facebook," according to the report.

"For instance, the collaboration between Spotify and Facebook allows new Spotify users to access the application via Facebook and share custom playlists with their friends.

A report on the global music streaming service projected the market to continue growing at a rate of 12.57% until 2019."

The RIAA say record labels are pushing services like Spotify to convert more free users to paid subscribers. This is not an easy task as the free version of streaming services yield everything a user will ever really need.