Audio Changes

Over the past few years, there’s no question that consumer audio has enjoyed a resurgence in popularity that it has not experienced in a long time. Driven by the growing use of streaming media, and the rediscovery of vinyl, people are once again listening to music, and in multichannel situations, enjoying a new era of surround sounds with formats like Dolby Atmos leading the way.

Earlier this year Nielsen released its annual music industry statistics which found that overall on-demand music streams grew by approximately 55 percent from 2013 numbers. Breaking the numbers down even further, audio streams grew by 60 percent.

At the same time physical music and download music sales are declining. During the recent Futuresource Audio Renaissance event in October, David Sidebottom of Futuresource said this year will go down as the year in which the sales scale tipped in favor of streaming media.