The economic impact of streaming beyond GDP

This paper finds that the shift from buying music as a physical product towards subscribing to music services implies a decrease of 85 percent in the price paid per song. We estimate that in 2019 the global quality adjusted value from streamed music was $76 billion compared to current revenues of $11.4 billion. Thus, the shift from consuming music in physical form towards subscribing to music services creates an enormous consumer surplus that is not recorded in GDP.