A Conservative Projection of Future of Music Sales in America 

The following passage is a quotation from Billboard.

 The current U.S. retail value of the business is around $7 billion and the world is around $23 billion, according to the RIAA and IFPI. Looking at U.S. album sales and single sales since 1995 and projecting sales out to 2020, one thing becomes clear; music sales revenues will be down or flat for the foreseeable future. Physical CDs will continue double-digit declines in units and even greater declines in value. Digital albums will continue to grow and will pass physical CDs in 2015 in unit sales, but gains in digital sales will continue to be erased by declines in physical sales causing a ceiling on overall U.S. album sales of around 300 million per year, according to projected current trends. Digital single sales growth is slowing: we almost reached 1.4 billion in 2012 but it is unlikely that they will reach 1.5 billion in 2016 before they begin to decline. When you consider inflation at around 2% a year, you see that sales revenue cannot support a sustainable music business.

Reference

Silverman, T. (2013, January 23). Building the $100 Billion Music Business. Retreived February 2, 2018, from https://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/digital-and-mobile/1521562/building-the-100-billion-music-business-guest-post-by