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The caption to the image below is:  “This is the graph the record industry doesn’t want you to see.”

Why not?

Because, says Times Labs Online which prepared it, “compiled from a PRS for Music report and the BPI,” it make two things clear >>>

1. that the growth in live revenue shows no signs of slowing; and,
2. that live is by far and away the most lucrative section of industry revenue for artists themselves, because they retain such a big percentage of the money from ticket sales.

And hopefully, says the article, “this analysis …  sheds some factual light on the claims and counter-claims that are paranoically sweeping across the music industry establishment, not least that put forward by the singer Lily Allen in this paper recently – and the BPI – that artists are losing out as a result of the fall in sales of recorded of music.”

Even more striking, perhaps, is the discovery that, “revenues accrued by artists themselves have in fact risen over the past 5 years, despite the fall in record sales,” says Times Labs, continuing >>>

It’s interesting too that, overall, industry revenues have grown in the period – though admittedly not by much – which arguably adds strength to the notion that, when the BPI releases its annual report claiming how much ‘the music industry’ has suffered from the growth in illegal file-sharing, what it perhaps should be saying is how much the record labels have suffered.

“For other people in the industry, not least artists, the future arguably holds more promise,” it adds.

Jon Newton