The Evolution of Music Formats
In the early ’80s and ’90s, the US musical market has been dominated by physical media. Since then musical formats have been evolving and each evolution had its own moment of convenience. The advancement of technology has led to digitalization and has led us to the most recent format which is streaming. Most of the people today prefer buying music online — streaming or download.
Here is the link to the source article (MakeoverMonday)
On the basis of the source visualization, below is my take on What is the scope of the streaming format in the coming future?
The market value was peaked in the 2000s for the physical musical format and after that, it has been steadily decreasing. Physical media was well known until the rise of MP3 downloads and P2P file sharing. As the internet was expanding exponentially, entrepreneurs saw the opportunity to make music available to all without having to download. Digital grew to nearly 90% of music industry sales in 2019. With the need for streaming increasing, applications like Spotify were launched. Today, millions of music and songs are available at your fingertips.
Here is the link to my visualization of the data
Above, interactive visualization aids in comparing the streaming format with other formats. While streaming is the preferred way to listen to music, the other formats of music still haven’t faded off. There’s still a market for Vinyl and CDs specifically. The vinyl format is still widely hailed as the optimum in sound quality and listening pleasure.
Conclusion
Streaming music format has largely eliminated music piracy and has made it easier for even smaller artists to get their music heard. When it comes to numbers, streaming seems to only be growing from here and bringing in much revenue for the industry.
Biases
Missingness of data leads to poor representation and includes assumptions. The data field ‘value actual’ has no clear description which again leads to assuming it as market value and revenue.
