The 21st century decline in recorded music revenues continues to send shockwaves throughout the music industry and although there are encouraging signs of digital-driven growth, the impact on artists is less clear. The concentration of the majority of recorded music revenue around a small share of musical works has led to the emergence a Superstar artist economy.

Since the advent of piracy artists have been told that they need not worry about declining music sales because their core business is making money from live and merchandise. At a headline level, macro music industry revenues appear to support the argument, but those numbers give little indication of the income that actually flows back to the artist nor of the impact of the hyper-concentration of revenue among the top 1% of artists.

10 years after the launch of the iTunes Store and 5 years after the launch of Spotify, digital music remains a largely niche sector, with the notable exception of YouTube. Despite a decade of contraction the CD remains the most pervasive music product while radio is the dominant consumption platform.