Recorded music sales are dying.

The last decade has seen the record industry shrink by 64% between 1999 and 2011. The amount of money spent by the average music listener in the United States fell from $71 to $26 during that time. There have always been doomsayers predicting the end of the music industry as we know it, but it looks like this time, they’re right.

The steep decline has been fueled partially by music piracy, but that doesn’t tell the whole story. Digital downloads fundamentally changed the way music listeners purchase their music, and iTunes took a 30% cut of every sale. Instead of purchasing entire albums, fans began to purchase just one or two tracks for a dollar each.

This was a heavy blow to an industry which is still sustained overwhelmingly by full album purchases. Eight years after iTunes launched, music listeners in the United States averaged only .25 downloaded albums per year per person. That’s not enough to sustain a multi-billion dollar industry.

Streaming is the newest player in the game, with services like Spotify growing in double-digits each year. These companies are helping to bring billions of dollars in revenue into the industry each year, but they do so in large part by cannibalizing music sales. Why would you purchase a CD when you can get a month of Spotify, with access to millions of tracks including the CD you were about to buy, for the same cost?

It’s an easy decision to make, and it’s why so many people are changing over to streaming as their main source of music. Including myself.

Image Source: Michael DeGusta for Business Insider

None of this is good news for the recorded music industry as a whole. Streaming may eventually become a massive business fueled by tens of billions of consumer dollars, but we’re certainly not there yet. And when we get there, it’s not clear what proportion of those billions of dollars will be flowing into the pockets of the recorded music industry.

But what is bad news for the recorded music industry is not necessarily bad news for artists.

The Internet has made it possible, for the first time in history, for an artist to reach millions of listeners around the world and earn a living through their music, all without ever needing to impress the musical gatekeepers or use a million-dollar marketing budget. Artists can now be in complete control of their own careers — which includes receiving a significantly larger proportion of the revenue from sales and other income than they would have in the past.

Whether you are a major, indie, or completely independent artist, the new music industry has opened up more possibilities for success than have ever existed in the past. You just have to know how to spot them.