Overview: streaming music will have 500 million paying subscribers by 2019

ONErpm founder and CEO Emmanuel Zunz was interviewed by "Digital Music News": he is positive that by 2019 will have 500 million paying subscribers. He said:

I can’t guarantee that this will happen, but I’ll certainly project it. And the reason is that new business models take time initially to ramp up. Usually what you then see is an inflection point, following by a new surge in all-of-a-sudden growth. That inflection point is that watershed moment, it’s the same thing.

He also added:

Currently, the growth curve for streaming is high among consumers, but in terms of payments and revenue, the growth rates are still pretty flat. But at some point, when people start getting really comfortable with streaming, behaviors will begin to change. That’s your watershed moment, one that will probably occur in about two years. We’ll start experiencing exponential growth.

Talking about royalties and payments, Zunz explained:

what I’m seeing right now is that we’re light years ahead of where we were two years ago, in terms of streaming monetization. And in two years, we’ll be even more light years ahead. So if the money is already not so bad right now, it’s going to be really good tomorrow. And if you look at it, the payments are decent right now, there are just issues of who’s getting paid. If it’s the label, it’s what’s getting passed to the artist. But streaming is a very important source of revenue for a music company today, and it should be an important source of income to the artist. But it’s often down to how much a label is paying the artist.

Read the full interview here.