"Man the walls! The waves of the digital streaming revolution approacheth!" (Photo Credit: Giuseppe Famiani)

To wrap up the decade, many of us at Chartmetric have spent time looking back at the whirlwind that the music industry just went through. The 2010s saw radical growth in the revenue and membership of music streaming platforms. In turn, that has changed how music is made, marketed, and consumed.

The growth in streaming has allowed the major labels to bring in massive amounts of revenue, but their growth seems to be slowing.

But as big as they are, the Western recorded music industry is much more than Universal, Sony and Warner. There have always been huge independents like 300, Concord and Beggars Group operating in the space. WINTEL's 2018 report, a product of MIDiA and Music Ally, showed the independent sector gaining much ground (and asking the key question of whether industry analysis should count ownership or distribution revenue as the basis of evaluation).

To vet how either fared through the streaming transition, we tracked the trends of chart-topping tracks over the past 3-years and across 17 music markets. Below we discuss the most interesting, and most informative, results.