< < Billy Steele/EngadgetStreaming has completely reshaped the face of the music industry over the last decade, with the likes of Spotify and Apple Music proving to be overwhelmingly popular with music fans. The Recording Industry Association of America has revealed some stats that underline the mammoth sea change. The organization says streaming accounts for 80 percent of the US music market, compared with seven percent in 2010. Streaming subscriptions rose from about 1.5 million to around 61 million between 2010 and the first half of 2019, according to the RIAA.Spotify landed in the US in 2011 and Apple Music debuted in 2014. There are many other streaming options around, including Tidal, Pandora, YouTube Music and Amazon Prime Music to name a few. Around 81 percent of Americans now have a smartphone, compared with about 35 percent in 2010. Since it's much easier to use a streaming service than buy digital albums or load MP3s onto a phone (or carry around a separate music player), smartphone adoption has played a key role in the streaming shift.In 2010, physical sales accounted for 52 percent of the US music market and digital sales 38 percent. Both are now down to a nine percent share. The market share of synch (i.e. licensing music for use in other media) hasn't changed over the last nine years at three percent. But while people aren't buying CDs so much anymore, vinyl's back on the up. Sales rose from a little over $50 million in 2009 to almost $450 million in 2018.Meanwhile, Taylor Swift (who famously pulled her music from Spotify for a while), Adele and Drake claimed eight of the top ten selling albums of the decade between them. It's not quite clear how their sales figures break down between streams and digital/physical album sales. However, given some of their songs have hundreds of millions of plays on various services, streaming certainly played an important factor.

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Billy Steele/Engadget

Streaming has completely reshaped the face of the music industry over the last decade, with the likes of Spotify and Apple Music proving to be overwhelmingly popular with music fans. The Recording Industry Association of America has revealed some stats that underline the mammoth sea change. The organization says streaming accounts for 80 percent of the US music market, compared with seven percent in 2010. Streaming subscriptions rose from about 1.5 million to around 61 million between 2010 and the first half of 2019, according to the RIAA.

Spotify landed in the US in 2011 and Apple Music debuted in 2014. There are many other streaming options around, including Tidal, Pandora, YouTube Music and Amazon Prime Music to name a few. Around 81 percent of Americans now have a smartphone, compared with about 35 percent in 2010. Since it's much easier to use a streaming service than buy digital albums or load MP3s onto a phone (or carry around a separate music player), smartphone adoption has played a key role in the streaming shift.

In 2010, physical sales accounted for 52 percent of the US music market and digital sales 38 percent. Both are now down to a nine percent share. The market share of synch (i.e. licensing music for use in other media) hasn't changed over the last nine years at three percent. But while people aren't buying CDs so much anymore, vinyl's back on the up. Sales rose from a little over $50 million in 2009 to almost $450 million in 2018.

Meanwhile, Taylor Swift (who famously pulled her music from Spotify for a while), Adele and Drake claimed eight of the top ten selling albums of the decade between them. It's not quite clear how their sales figures break down between streams and digital/physical album sales. However, given some of their songs have hundreds of millions of plays on various services, streaming certainly played an important factor.

<'Fortnite' made a historic $1.8 billion in 2019/h3> < < Fortnite won its chicken dinner in 2019 by grossing $1.8 billion in sales, more than any single-year sales total in videogame history. While the game itself is technically free-to-play, Epic Games offers a $10 per month Battle Pass as well as myriad in-game item purchases -- from clothing and weapons to dance moves and player reactions -- to keep the game's 125 million active players coming back for more. Combined with heavy marketing tie-ins to the year's biggest blockbusters, including both Avengers and Star Wars, as well as the debut of Chapter 2 in October and a marquee eSports circuit in August, it's little surprise that the game remains a cultural touchstone.Overall the gaming industry did well for itself in 2019. Nielsen notes that the industry as a whole grossed $120 billion in sales, a four percent increase over its 2018 totals. A lion's share of that total can be credited to mobile gaming with $64.4 billion in sales, followed by PC gaming with $29.4 billion, and consoles bringing in $15.4. VR/AR games and game-related videos constituted the remainder of the industry total for 2019.

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Fortnite won its chicken dinner in 2019 by grossing $1.8 billion in sales, more than any single-year sales total in videogame history. While the game itself is technically free-to-play, Epic Games offers a $10 per month Battle Pass as well as myriad in-game item purchases -- from clothing and weapons to dance moves and player reactions -- to keep the game's 125 million active players coming back for more. Combined with heavy marketing tie-ins to the year's biggest blockbusters, including both Avengers and Star Wars, as well as the debut of Chapter 2 in October and a marquee eSports circuit in August, it's little surprise that the game remains a cultural touchstone.

Overall the gaming industry did well for itself in 2019. Nielsen notes that the industry as a whole grossed $120 billion in sales, a four percent increase over its 2018 totals. A lion's share of that total can be credited to mobile gaming with $64.4 billion in sales, followed by PC gaming with $29.4 billion, and consoles bringing in $15.4. VR/AR games and game-related videos constituted the remainder of the industry total for 2019.

< < Apple has removed Fortnite from the App Store, according to Bloomberg’s Marc Gurman. The delisting comes just hours after Fortnite developer Epic Games started offering discounts on the game’s V-bucks currency and other cash purchases if players bypassed the App Store and Google Play. For the couple of hours that it was available, the discount let players save up to 20 percent on their next Fortnite purchase, and gave Epic the opportunity to avoid giving Apple the 30 percent cut it takes from third-party developers.Even for a studio that has consistently pushed back against companies like Google and Valve, the way Epic highlighted the discount was likely too brazen for Apple to ignore. While Epic still gave players the option to go through the App Store, few likely did after seeing that they could save money.Shortly after the removal, the company filed a lawsuit against Apple. Epic also announced it would stream a new short called Nineteen Eighty-Fortnite, which you can watch below. The title of the short is a reference to Apple’s iconic 1984 Macintosh ad. Epic also mentioned 1984 in their legal brief.“Today, Epic Games took the unfortunate state of violating the App Store guidelines that are applied equally to every developer and designed to keep the store safe for our users. As result their Fortnite app has been removed from the Store,” said Apple. “Epic enabled a feature in its app which was not reviewed or approved by Apple, and they did so with the express intent of violating the App Store guidelines regarding in-app payments that apply to every developer who sells digital goods or services.”The two companies have been moving towards a confrontation for a while now. In an interview with CNBC this past July, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney criticized the tech giant for the 30 percent revenue cut it takes from developers. “They [Apple] are preventing an entire category of businesses and applications from being engulfed in their ecosystem by virtue of excluding competitors from each aspect of their business that they’re protecting,” Sweeney said.This isn’t the first time Sweeney and Epic have picked a fight with a tech giant. In 2016, the executive penned a scathing op-ed against Microsoft’s Universal Windows Platform (UWP). Sweeney argued the initiative was the first step toward Microsoft locking down a monopoly on app distribution in Windows 10. In a way, Sweeney and company won. While Microsoft hasn’t abandoned UWP, it has in the years since significantly scaled back the project.Epic isn’t the only company that has criticized Apple for its App Store policies. Two other high-profile examples include Spotify and Basecamp. The tech giant is also the subject of antitrust investigations in the US and EU.

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Apple has removed Fortnite from the App Store, according to Bloomberg’s Marc Gurman. The delisting comes just hours after Fortnite developer Epic Games started offering discounts on the game’s V-bucks currency and other cash purchases if players bypassed the App Store and Google Play. For the couple of hours that it was available, the discount let players save up to 20 percent on their next Fortnite purchase, and gave Epic the opportunity to avoid giving Apple the 30 percent cut it takes from third-party developers.

Even for a studio that has consistently pushed back against companies like Google and Valve, the way Epic highlighted the discount was likely too brazen for Apple to ignore. While Epic still gave players the option to go through the App Store, few likely did after seeing that they could save money.

Shortly after the removal, the company filed a lawsuit against Apple. Epic also announced it would stream a new short called Nineteen Eighty-Fortnite, which you can watch below. The title of the short is a reference to Apple’s iconic 1984 Macintosh ad. Epic also mentioned 1984 in their legal brief.

“Today, Epic Games took the unfortunate state of violating the App Store guidelines that are applied equally to every developer and designed to keep the store safe for our users. As result their Fortnite app has been removed from the Store,” said Apple. “Epic enabled a feature in its app which was not reviewed or approved by Apple, and they did so with the express intent of violating the App Store guidelines regarding in-app payments that apply to every developer who sells digital goods or services.”

The two companies have been moving towards a confrontation for a while now. In an interview with CNBC this past July, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney criticized the tech giant for the 30 percent revenue cut it takes from developers. “They [Apple] are preventing an entire category of businesses and applications from being engulfed in their ecosystem by virtue of excluding competitors from each aspect of their business that they’re protecting,” Sweeney said.

This isn’t the first time Sweeney and Epic have picked a fight with a tech giant. In 2016, the executive penned a scathing op-ed against Microsoft’s Universal Windows Platform (UWP). Sweeney argued the initiative was the first step toward Microsoft locking down a monopoly on app distribution in Windows 10. In a way, Sweeney and company won. While Microsoft hasn’t abandoned UWP, it has in the years since significantly scaled back the project.

Epic isn’t the only company that has criticized Apple for its App Store policies. Two other high-profile examples include Spotify and Basecamp. The tech giant is also the subject of antitrust investigations in the US and EU.