The music industry is coming back to life in a whole new way thanks to the power of streaming and it’s ever-growing popularity.

Music streaming is giving a massive boost to the music industry as profits continue to soar upwards after 15 years of falling revenues ended with the boom of streaming. Sony Music have just released their earnings report for the 2017-18 fiscal year which shows that streaming is still driving incredible growth for the music industry as more and more people sign up to streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music.

Sony’s report shows that for the fiscal year, ending March 31st, their music division’s revenue rose by 12% to around $4.03 billion. This was driven largely by an incredible 37% increase in music streaming revenues which totalled $1.8 billion for the year and now accounts for 44% of Sony’s entire music division’s earnings. It’s representative of the impressive growing power of music streaming services but also marks an impressive first year with new CEO Rob Stringer at Sony’s helm.

Interestingly Sony’s report also shows growth for their physical music department, despite the growth of digital music often diminishing physical sales. According to their fiscal report Sony’s physical sales rose by almost $10 million up to $1.20 billion. It’s considerably lower than their increase in streaming revenues but as CD sales rapidly decline in most parts of the world it’s an impressive feat to see physical sales rise.

Sony said that their profits in the physical market were helped by the ever-increasing demand for vinyl which is looking to become the favourite format when it comes to holding music in your hands. Sony said that their physical boom was largely down to the fact that physical music still has a large market in Japan where digital music is still catching up. Trends show that physical sales are still expected to continue declining despite Sony’s success. Meanwhile in the digital market download revenues dropped 18% to slightly under $450 million.

Sony said that their most successful albums for the year were Pink’s ‘Beautiful Trauma’, DJ Khaled’s ‘Grateful’ and Cabello’s ‘Camila’.