The first half of this year has been a slight letdown when it comes to the music business. Sure, plenty of artists are putting out great music, but as far as U.S. music revenue, 2014 so far has trailed 2013 by about 5 percent, according to the Recording Industry Association of America's mid-year Shipment and Revenue report.

The recording industry report said that sales have been 4.9 percent lower from January through June, down to $3.2 billion from the $3.35 billion accumulated during the same time in 2013.

The RIAA said that digital music revenue hadn't dropped as steeply, only declining by half a percentage point to $2.2 billion.

Despite these plateaus, subscription revenue spiked 23.2 percent up to $371.4 million, thanks to advertising-supported platforms. These revenues include Rhapsody and paid versions of platforms like Spotfiy, streaming radio like Pandora, SiriusXM and other internet radio channels, as well as non-subscription on-demand streaming sites like YouTube, Vevo and ad-supported Spotify. The RIAA estimated that these kind of paid subscriptions had an average of 7.8 million subscribers each in the first half of 2014.

Even the subscription sites could not entirely offset the overall music sales from decline; album and song sales fell 11.8 percent from year-to-year.

Physical products like CD sales dropped to $715.6 million, at more than 19 percent decline from $994.1 million sold last year. However, vinyl record sales grew a staggering 41 percent from 2013 to $6.5 million.

This year's RIAA report also featured for the first time overall market volume for wholesale. Usually the report's numbers are added up from the album's retail list price, not reflecting the wholesale price that record labels get when they send merchandise to retailers. With these converted numbers, the RIAA states that the music marketplace, based on download and physical product purchases is down about $100 million from $2.3 billion at the same time 2013.