Record companies made $2.4B last year from streaming, but it’s not enough

New figures released Tuesday by the Recording Industry Association of America show that streaming sites overtook downloads for the first time as the music industry’s single largest revenue stream.

In its earnings statement, the RIAA noted that when all types of streaming are combined (subscription, ad-supported on-demand and SoundExchange), it constitutes $2.4 billion in revenue for 2015—a rise of 29 percent over the previous year.

Still, despite the rapid rise in digital revenue, the RIAA says that's not nearly sufficient.

As Cary Sherman, the group’s CEO, wrote:

The consumption of music is skyrocketing, but revenues for creators have not kept pace. In 2015, fans listened to hundreds of billions of audio and video music streams through on-demand ad-supported digital services like YouTube, but revenues from such services have been meager — far less than other kinds of music services. And the problem is getting worse.

He also noted that 2015’s sales of 17 million vinyl albums yielded $416 million, while “hundreds of billions” of streams on ad-fueled streaming services (like Pandora or Spotify) only generated $385 million in revenue.

The RIAA has taken a new aggressive tack in recent years to combat online piracy: it has filed lawsuits against Aurous, MP3Skull, Megaupload, and others.

Last year, the RIAA also struck two major deals with Pandora and SiriusXM to pay licensing fees for pre-1972 songs.