Vinyl will soon overtake CDs, new report claims – and music is now bigger than cinema

• Music report reveals revenues now higher than global box office receipts
• The value of music sales and streaming has nearly doubled in a decade
• Revenues are growing 11% year on year, but artists aren’t profiting

Here’s a pair of facts we never thought we’d see: music is now a bigger business than cinema and vinyl is about to overtake CDs. That’s according to a new report by Spotify’s former chief economist (via MusicRadar), who’s been tracking the value of the music business for a decade.

Will Page has spent ten years calculating the value of music copyrights and performing rights, which are the rights that generate payments when music is pressed onto records, streamed over Spotify or played on the radio. And the value of those copyrights has increased from $25 billion in 2014 to $45.5 billion now.

The movie business, by comparison, is a $33.2 billion business (see below). While music has soared movies have declined: box office revenues peaked globally in 2019 at $41.9 billion.

Music revenues aren’t necessarily going to artists – most of the music money goes to multiple middlemen; not all musicians who play music wrote it, and writing music is where the most valuable copyrights are – but the report details some fascinating trends.

The vinyl revival

In the US alone, Page says, vinyl will bring in $1 billion for record labels in 2024. That means vinyl revenues are about to overtake CDs, not just in the US but globally.

There’s been a shift in how music generates money too. In 2023, revenues from live music performances overtook those for public performance licensing, which is when commercial premises such as shops or hotels pay a license to play music to their…