Top 1% of artists earn 77% of all recorded music income, new study shows

The inequality of wealth stretches to the music industry too, it seems, as a new report finds that superstar artists are responsible for a massive 77% share of physical and digital music sales.

As Consequence Of Sound point out, a recent study by MIDiA Consulting has found that the digital age has resulted in not only a decline for the music industry but a saturation of wealth for just a handful of artists.

While you might think the internet would democratise music for all, it’s actually had the opposite impact. The “vastness of digital music catalogues should have translated into a dilution of the Superstar economy effect”, but the report says it hasn’t.

It continues: “the marketplace has shown us that humans are just as much wandering sheep in need of herding online as they are offline”.

You can check out graphs from the report below, with more information on the study here.