Thanks to the growth of subscription streaming services such Apple Music and Spotify the Recording Industry Association of America said its overall revenues rose nearly 1% in estimated retail value last year to $7 billion, or to about $5 billion in wholesale value. It was the fifth consecutive year that the market posted slight gains in wholesale value.

According to the Wall Street Journal, "Subscription streaming revenues jumped 52% to $1.2 billion, with consumers paying for an average of 10.8 million subscriptions for the full year, and about 13 million subscriptions in December. Streaming now accounts for the biggest component of the U.S. market, with 34% of the recorded-music industry's revenues reaped from streaming in 2015, up from 27% the prior year.

The streaming boom was aided by the launches last year of Apple Inc.'s Apple Music and Jay Z's streaming service Tidal, and it has more than offset declines in sales of CDs and digital downloads. About 122 million CDs were shipped last year, down from 142 million in 2014, while 1 billion digital singles were sold, down from nearly 1.2 billion singles in 2014. Digital album sales declined 7% to 109 million."

While the industry appears to be happy about overall revenues being up a paltry 1%, it looks as though the shift in music isn't quite settled yet. I think people are still experimenting with the streaming music craze.

With Apple clocking in 10 million new music streaming customers by the end of 2015, I'm surprised that revenues weren't a little higher. In fact, without Apple's big push, for sure that paltry 1% growth in revenues would have been in negative territory for 2015. The music industry should be thanking Apple for any increase in revenue this year, plain and simple. I assume the thank you card is in the mail.

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