A report by HypeBot
has indicated that streaming platform Spotify is now the second largest source
of revenue for all major record companies. Beaten only by the inevitable iTunes,
Spotify is growing rapidly in terms of their royalty payouts.
Sean Parker, investor in Spotify is hopeful that Spotify can
one day overtake iTunes, claiming that if they “continue growing at their
current rate in terms of subscriptions and downloads, they’ll overtake iTunes
in terms of contributions to the recorded music business in under two years”.
You may think this sounds like typical Sean Parker bravado,
and you would be right. The gap between iTunes and Spotify is still significant.
However, in territories such as Sweden and France where streaming is more
prominent than downloads, this power shift could happen sooner than we think.