Adele caused the record industry to increase to over $7 billion last year

The recorded music industry in the U.S. topped the $7 billion mark last year, according to the Recording Industry Assn. of America. The trade organization that represents major record labels released its 2015 numbers today.

That’s good, but humbling, news for a business that once surpassed the $12 billion mark around 2000. The tally was $7.016 billion, up from 2014’s $6.951, according to figures reported by Billboard. In other words, thanks Adele!
Not surprisingly, streaming numbers are soaring— up to 317.2 billion streams from 2014’s 164.5 billion— but as the industry muddles its way through trying to find fair and equitable rates to pay artists, labels and songwriters, Billboard reports that the per stream rate is falling.

Singer Adele performs on stage at The O2 Arena on March 15, 2016 in London, England. (Photo by Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images)

Taking the RIAA’s figures and Nielsen NLSN +0.52% Media’s counts, Billboard extrapolated that the streaming rate per audio and video stream dropped from $0.00666 in 2014 to $0.00506 in 2015.
Breaking down the overall numbers further, streaming and downloading each account for 34% of industry revenue. Physical sales have dropped to around 29%, while synchronization usage makes up the rest at around 3%.

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Apple AAPL -0.09% Music’s 2015 launch and Spotify’s continued U.S. growth helped lead paid subscription revenue’s boom as it increased 52.3 %, surpassing the $1 billion mark for the first time and rising to $1.22 billion from 2014’s $800.1 million.
Here’s a further breakdown:
*Digital sales revenue (sales and streams): $4.8 million up from $4.51 billion in 2014
*Physical sales revenue (CDs, vinyl, DVDs for albums and singles): $1.9 billion down from $2.08 billion in 2014
*Track downloads: Dropped to 1.02 billion downloads, down from 1.2 billion in 2014