7 Teorias Musicais do Tema Principal De "Final Fantasy VII" - Parte II

7 Music Theory Lessons from the Main Theme of Final Fantasy VII - Part II

Lesson III: Cadences

Why this lesson is important:

Most music will do two things very well: create tension, and resolve that tension.  Cadences help our music have a sense of resolution or finality at the end of a section or piece.  If you’re already writing music, you’re already using cadences – you just might not know which cadences you’re using – and how often.  This lesson helps you understand how to bring a piece/section back “home,” using a cadence, how you can trick your listeners and take them in an unexpected direction, and more.

The Lesson:

A cadence usually refers to the chord progressions located at the end of a passage or piece of music, and will often refer specifically to the last two, three, or four chords of that music.  There are a few different types of cadences that we can use depending on the situation or desired effect, but for this post I’ll be talking about two specific cadences that appear in the main theme from Final Fantasy VII.

An authentic cadence is when a passage or piece ends with a V – I chord progression.  This is the most common cadence because it’s a very strong progression that sounds very natural to most listeners.  In the Final Fantasy VII theme, you can hear a perfect cadence at the end of the most familiar section:

Do you hear how the chords and melody work together to gently bring you to the end?  That’s an authentic cadence, baby!  If you play an instrument and know a few pop songs, you’ll find that most of them end in this way.

A deceptive cadence, on the other hand, tricks the listener by setting them up to EXPECT an authentic V – I cadence… but ends on an unexpected chord instead, leaving the listener hanging.  A commonly-used deceptive cadence is the V – vi cadence, during which the listener expects to hear a I chord after the V chord but instead hears the music resolve in a vi chord.  Not only are they tricked, but they are tricked and left to wallow in a minor chord instead of a happy, resolute major chord.  Mwahahaha…

After building up the excitement of the piece for awhile, Uematsu uses a deceptive cadence to end a section on a vi chord.  Since we’ve heard a V – I cadence with this part of the melody several times by this point, the vi is a total curve ball – which makes it interesting.  More importantly, this minor vi chord sets us up nicely for the next section, which is much darker and more ominous than the rest of the piece:

How you can use this lesson:

Obviously, if you’re looking to end a piece or section as resolutely as possible, you should probably use the authentic cadence: V-I.  Having said that, you should also take a look at how often you’re using V – I cadences in your music already.  If you find yourself ending every single piece you write with a V – I progression, it might be time to do a little more reading on cadences and harmonic progression so you can keep things interesting.  Also, gaming music is unique in that a lot it loops – indefinitely!  This creates an interesting challenge, and knowing a bit about cadences can help you manage them more effectively to end sections, pieces, or lead into looping sections.  For a great example of a unique cadence leading into a loop, listen to Barret’s theme.  Pay close attention to the very unconventional cadence which throws a very desperate, pained emotion into the music for about 15 seconds before the otherwise positive-sounding piece repeats itself.

Finally, it’s important to keep the melody in mind when approaching a cadence to avoid a train wreck.  Your ear will probably avoid this problem for you if you’re writing the melody and chords at the same time, but you don’t want to accidentally paint yourself into a corner with a melody that’s very difficult to harmonize at the end of a section.  Regardless of how cool the last 2 bars of melody may sound by themselves, your entire piece may suffer if you’re forced to harmonize them with a weak cadence.  This is especially important when composing the melody by itself before touching the harmony, as it will be more difficult to “hear” how a melody will lead from one section into another (Happily, I’ve found this to be one of those things that you can hear when you’re doing it well, but easily miss when you’re doing it poorly).

Lesson IV: Ostinatos (or, Ostinati)

Why this lesson is important:

If you’ve listened to any video game music, you’ve probably heard several ostinatos. Ostinatos are massively useful – especially in game audio – because they can act as an anchor for the listener while simultaneously driving the rythmic pulse of the music.  Ostinatos probably made up a large percentage of early game audio, which needed to leverage repetitive rhythmic patterns to provide a harmonic progression while supplementing the percussion of the music.  If you’re writing chip tune music, you may already be using ostinatos without even realizing it and if you’re aware of what they are and their function you can make more deliberate choices in your tracks.  For more “modern” game scores, the function of providing an anchor – even for a single section within a larger piece – becomes a powerful tool to create contrast or provide a thematic effect without actually having a theme.

The Lesson:

What is an ostinato, exactly?  Basically, a musical phrase that repeats itself throughout a piece of music – usually within the same instrument/voice, and often at the same pitch.  Ostinatos might take several forms, including a baseline pattern that repeats itself across a chord progression, a stand-out percussion phrase, or the left-hand piano part in a good old fashioned boogie.  This may seem like an extremely broad definition, but hopefully a few examples can help reign us in a bit.

In Final Fantasy 7’s theme, we’re going to focus on the section that follows the 2nd video from Lesson III above.  After Uematsu dumps us into a minor key, the piece transitions from a hopeful, lush sound to a very ominous, foreboding section.  In my opinion, the use of an obstinate in the piano (OST version) or bass strings (orchestral version) creates most of the tension that can be felt during this section, which you can hear below:

Not only does this little phrase reinforce the fact that we’re in a minor key, but it stays on the same pitches throughout most of the section to specifically reinforce the Emin chord (which is a “i” chord, using Roman numerals).  In addition to reinforcing this new tonality, this creates tension throughout the section as the obstinate continues to reinforce an E minor chord while the rest of the music throws in chords like a crunchy-sounding Emin6 (an Emin chord, plus a C# note) or an F#maj chord:

Ostinatos are extremely prevalent in video game music.  In the early days of game audio, the hardware limited composers to a handful of channels and possible sounds to work with.  For example, the NES had 5 available sound channels – two of which were usually reserved specifically for the lead melody and harmony.  That leaves 3 channels/lines to establish the harmonic progression AND the drive the pulse of the music.  Yikes.  Keep in mind that each of these channels were capable of playing a single note at a time, which provided an even greater challenge!

7 Teorias Musicais do Tema Principal De "Final Fantasy VII" - Parte I

7 Music Theory Lessons from the Main Theme of Final Fantasy VII - Part I

NOTE: This post contains score excerpts and video clips for illustration purposes.  If you have trouble seeing or playing the video clips, try Refreshing this page.

Many of today’s musicians are, on some level, self-taught.  Some of us are mostly or entirely self-taught musicians, which has become increasingly possible due to the abundance of free information and increasingly-accessible tools/instruments available today on the internet.  Unfortunately, many self-taught musicians have a shared weakness: music theory.

Before we dive into the music theory deep end, I want to preface the following information with a few thoughts and notes on the context of these lessons and how you can actually benefit from them.  ‘Theory,’ by itself isn’t helpful, but tools and application of knowledge can be indispensable.  I believe that most people fail to learn (or fail to remember) music theory because they try to learn/are taught the theory without relevant context or meaningful application.  If I want to learn to play pop songs on my guitar so I can sing those songs, do I need to learn anything about scales?  No, probably not – and if I try to learn them I’ll either fail out of boredom or I’ll forget what I learn because it isn’t relevant to my goals.  If I want to learn how to write a great melody, on the other hand, musical scales are the building blocks for melody and harmony and this information is extremely valuable to understand.

I’ll do my best to explain why each lesson may be useful to you, but you don’t have to use every trick on this list.  If there’s a specific effect from the examples below that you enjoy, use that lesson.  Try adding it to your next piece, or try adding it to an old piece to breathe new life into it.  If you like the effect and understand how to replicate it, it becomes part of your compositional “bag of tricks” and can be called upon later.

Enough context – on to the meat and potatoes!  Today, we travel back in time to 1997 (yes, it’s been that long) to dissect the main theme from Final Fantasy VII.  This theme is one of the more recognizable RPG themes ever written, and the motif from the piece is sprinkled throughout the entire Final Fantasy VII soundtrack which provides an excellent cohesion between the various different settings and events of the game.  This piece is jam-packed with little musical tricks, so put on your learnin’ caps and buckle up.  Ready?  All right, everyone – let’s mosey.

Cloud’s rallying call-to-arms before he leads his party into a final battle against Sephiroth.

Lesson I: Using Intervals in Melody Writing

Why this lesson is important:

A great melody is priceless, and Final Fantasy VII’s main theme has a simple, beautiful melody.  Writing an effective melody is all about balance, and writing a balanced melody can be very difficult when you’re actively trying to write an interestingmelody.  What makes a melody interesting is contrast and balance between the different elements within.  Intervals are one of those critical elements you need to balance, and if you struggle with consistently writing melodies that you don’t hate you may want to take this lesson to heart.

The Lesson:

An interval is the distance between two pitches, but not all intervals are created equal.  If terms like a “major third,” “perfect fourth,” or “perfect fifth” are completely foreign to you, I would pause here and watch this video by Joshua Taipale of Ongaku Concept to get up to speed in less than 8 minutes.

I could write pages on this topic, but for the sake of pacing and attention spans I’m going to zero in on the first part of the main melody of this piece and how intervals are being used intelligently.  Within a melody, you can move from one note to another either by a step or a skip.  Stepwise motion is when the distance between two notes is either a major or minor 2nd interval apart.  If looking at a keyboard, if you were to play all of the white keys in ascending order you would be playing in ascending, stepwise motion.  To put it another way, if the letter names of two notes are next to each other in the alphabet, it’s a step.  Any interval larger than that would be considered a skip.

As a general guideline, melodies should contain mostly stepwise motion.  The following 4-bar excerpt contains the main melodic material that the entire piece is built on, including the main motive of the game which appears in many forms throughout this piece and several others.  The red lines indicate steps and the blue lines indicate skips.  As you can see, this melody contains mostly steps but uses skips sparingly to create the most interesting moments of the melody:

The red lines are “steps,” and the blue lines are “skips”.

There are a few things that this accomplishes.  First, it creates contrast within the melody by using a balance of mostly-stepwise intervals and a few intelligently-placed skips.  If you wrote a melody that only used steps it would be more susceptible to sounding boring or predictable.  If you wrote a melody that only used skips, it would generally be less appealing to most listeners because their ears would have a hard time following the sporadic motion as the melody jumped up and down all over the place.  The phrases “variety is the spice of life,” and “everything in moderation,” should both be remembered when writing a melody.  For more supporting evidence, listen to the first major melodic phrase of the Star Wars theme (9 steps, 6 skips) by John Williams or the first phrase of Nascence from Journey (12 steps, 5 skips) by Austin Wintory.

Another way to effectively use intervals is to emphasize a specific interval that is less common, more colorful, or larger than the rest.  The first two measures of that same excerpt contains the main musical idea that echoes throughout this piece in different forms and creeps its way into several other tracks on the game.  The interval between the first and fourth notes are the most prominent/important of the phrase and, arguably, the entire soundtrack.  What interval does Uematsu use at the center of the game’s most frequently-heard track, reoccurring musical idea, and – as a result – the hero’s theme?  A major 7th, of course.  See what he did there?

The most prominent musical idea in Final Fantasy 7 is built around a major 7th interval.

How you can apply this lesson:

Whether you start writing a melody by improvising or simply writing down the ideas that pop into your head, you should see how you’re currently intervals and be mindful of any patterns that arise.  You may find that you’re barely using stepwise motion, or that you’re skipping all over the place.  Some people unknowingly write melody after melody without ever daring to use intervals larger than a 3rd or 4th, which is the equivalent of painting with only half of the color palette.  Unless you’re incredibly clever, using the same intervals all the time will make it more difficult for new melodies to sound distinct from the rest.  You can also proactively choose a specific interval to highlight something specific in a video game, like a character’s theme, a dramatic event, or specific emotion that recurs throughout the game.

Lesson II: Basics of Keys, Scales, and which Chords to Use

Why this lesson is important:

If you’re a painter, you need to know which colors work together well.  Music is similar, and if you haven’t had any formal music training you may struggle to find which chords and notes ‘work’ as you compose.  By understanding a little bit about keys, scales, and the chords that fit together, you can quickly identify the most common chords available to you in the key that you’re writing in.  In other words, this helps remove a lot of the guess-work that may leave you hunting and pecking at the keyboard until something sounds right.

This is kind of 3 mini-lessons crammed into one, but that’s intentional because they’re so closely dependent on one another.

The Lesson:

The “key,” or “tonality,” of a piece of music tells you a lot of information before you even hear the first note.  If I’m writing a piece in the key of A Major, I know that ‘A’ is the root or home pitch of the piece and the A Major chord is the ‘tonic’ or home chord.  Most of the time, a piece in A Major will start and end with an A Major chord or note.  The first chord acts as an anchor for the listener, establishing ‘home base’ in their mind before you take them on a musical journey which will usually end with a return to home, as any good journey should.  This is another one of those guidelines that is not hard-and-fast rule, but you will find this to be true with most western music from pop songs to Beethoven symphonies.

In FF VII’s theme, the majority of the piece is in E Major and the sections written in E Major will be based on the E Major scale – which means that most of the musical material within that piece will be built with the 7 pitches contained within the E Major scale.  As a result, the primary chords used in the E Major sections of the piece are chords that you can construct using those same 7 pitches of an E Major scale.  In E Major, your scale contains the following pitches: E, F#, G#, A, B, C#, D# and the chords you can build using those pitches are E Major (E, G#, B), F# minor (F#, A, C#), G# minor (G#, B, D#), A Major (A, C#, E), B Major (B, D#, F#), C# Minor (C#, E, G#), and D# diminished (D#, F#, A).  While many songs and pieces stay strictly within these constraints, composers will often use this information as the foundation of their piece but explore musical ideas that reach past those limitations.

Most (or all) of a piece written in E Major will use the above notes and chords.

In the 40 bars of music that make up the main/most memorable sections of Uematsu’s piece (0:51 – 3:15 on the OST version), the melody adheres strictly to the pitches available in the E major scale.  As for the chords, there is only 1 bar that uses chords containing pitches outside of the E Major scale in this section. Being limited to only 7 notes may sound… well… limiting, but as Uematsu has illustrated: You can color inside the lines and still make amazing music.

Now, all of those letter names can give you a headache if you’re constantly trying to remember which letters belong where.  For this reason, roman numerals are frequently used to describe scale degrees and chord progressions.  By using roman numerals to describe and think about music, we can focus on the relationship between chords, scales, and music and know that – no matter what key you’re in – those relationships stay the same.

For example, one of the most common chord progressions in pop music is I – V – vi – IV (upper-case = Major chord, lower-case = minor chord).  No matter what key you’re playing and what note/chord you’re calling home, you can play this chord progression relative to your key.  Thus, a I – V – vi – IV progression in the key of C Major would contain the following chords: Cmaj – Gmaj – Amin – Fmaj.  The same I-V-vi-IV progression in E Major would be Emaj-Bmaj-C#min-Amaj.  It’s way easier to analyze music and learn about music theory using Roman numerals because the Roman numerals stay the same no matter which key you’re talking about.

How you can use this lesson:

Whether you compose the melody or the chord progressions first, you’ll quickly establish a tonal center.  If a new melody hits you while you’re humming in the shower and you run over the keyboard/guitar afterwards, you should be able to look at the pitches you’re using and determine which key you’re in.  Once you’ve established the key, you know which scale to use and which chords belong with that scale as a result – thus eliminating the hunting/pecking method of randomly playing notes and chords until you stumble upon something that sounds like it might fit.  You know what fits before you ever put pen to paper or hit the record button.

5 Horas de Música Para Concentração e Estudo! Escute os Links!

Five hours of incredible music for concentration and studying

We’ve often received feedback that the music we write is really conducive to working, studying, and focusing. So we decided to been explore other music from a wide variety of artists and bands whose output has also be described as concentration music. This is a bit of a different article, and we’re not going to dwell extensively on each album or release – rather, we want to let the music do the talking.

As always, you can listen to the playlist on Spotify, and this time round it’s a five-hour extravaganza of concentration music. It features over thirty different musicians, whom we have listed below – you can find out more about them by clicking on them.

Listen now (Spotify)

https://open.spotify.com/artist/0S3L6vtzNN4ArFWH2709SB

https://www.spotify.com/?utm_source=open-spb&utm_medium=spb-logo

What is concentration music? Do a Google search and you’ll get a whole load of different definitions! From our perspective it’s calm music that focuses, rather than distracts. The kind of music you can happily have on in the background without getting drawn into it – you won’t find heavy drum-based tracks or uptempo orchestral scores in this selection. At the same time, we feel there should still be enough interest to stimulate thoughts and inspire creativity, so strictly ambient / drone tracks are out too! Hopefully you’ll feel the balance is a good one, and we’d love to hear what you think about this collection of concentration music! Leave a comment below or let us know on Facebook! Have any suggestions for other music to include? We’d love to hear them too.

Concentration music featured in the playlist

Here is the wide spread of music featured in the playlist, with a short comment about each:

The Album Leaf (The Sailor) – Calm, organic and atmospheric.
Aphex Twin (Aisatsana [102]) – Minimalistic piano explorations.
Bethel Music (Interludes from ‘Without Words’) – Instrumental, inspiring, and inherently positive.
Carinthia (a selection of music from his two albums, as well as some music released as Daniel Jorgensen) – Nature-inspired, evocative and reflective. Also featured in our meditation music playlist.
Dustin O’Hallaran (An Ending, A Beginning and We Move Lightly) – Minimal yet stunningly beautiful piano-focused compositions.
The Echelon Effect (Tracking Aeroplanes) – A inviting, enjoyably meandering and organic journey.
Esbjörn Hazelius (Fenix) – A concentrated slice of Swedish folk nostalgia.
Fragments (Echoes) – Minimalist, developmental, and full of intrigue.
Gidge (Fauna, Pt 1)- Orchestral and creatively atmospheric music from northern Sweden.
Goldmund (Threnody) – Calmness, openness, and focus: perfect music for studying by Keith Kenniff (Helios).
Good Weather For An Airstrike (selection) – Slow moving yet organically evolving.
Helios (selection) – Masterful use of evocative ambience alongside guitar and piano motifs.
In Cathedrals (Reverie) – Constantly developing reverb-filled guitar swells.
James Newton Howard (I’m Listening) – Sad, yet subtly hopeful.
Jóhann Jóhannsson (a selection from The Theory Of Everything soundtrack) – Minimalist and positive concentration music.
Jon Hopkins (selection) – Stunning soundscapes surround beutifully simple organic motifs.
Aye Kye (Celeste) – Haunting synths envelop a background of evolving strings.

Kyle McEvoy (Serendipity) – A light, positive, developing guitar-based composition.
The Last Dinosaur (Gusts Of Wind Blowing In Different Directions) – Atmospheric and organic.
Library Tapes (Fragment II) – Experimental, light tones with a hints of a serious backdrop.
Lowercase Noises (Silence Of Siberia) – Encapsulates the location perfectly.
Message To Bears (Closed Doors) – Field recordings meshed with simple organic motifs and melodies.
Nils Frahm (Some and Ambre) – Reflective piano pieces with a hopeful streak.
Ólafur Arnalds (selection) – Haunting Iceland-inspired neo-classical compositions
Parachute Band (Consecrate) – Calm, positive, focused, and affirming.
Paulette Wooten (Peaceful Reverse) – Minimal, evocative, and concentrated.
Port Blue (selection) – Owl City’s ambient alter-ego. Also featured in our meditation music playlist.
Random Forest (First To Wake and Leaving Safe Places) – The best in atmospheric rock.
Rhian Sheehan (Sileo) – An inspiring journey through nature and sound.
Salt Of The Sound (selection) – Reflective, atmospheric and intriguing: great music to study to.
Sleeping At Last (selection) – Exceptionally evocative instrumental compositions.
Slow Meadow (A Farewell Sonata) – Slightly experimental, and wonderfully creative orchestral music.
Tony Anderson (selection) – Beautifully crafted and calm, yet eminently cinematic.
Flor (Pale Lights) – At dusk, by the camp fire, a meandering guitar.

7 Canções Escritas em Menos de 1 Dia! Assista aos Vídeos

7 Famous Songs Written in Less Than a Day

Bob Dylan once said "Tangled Up in Blue" took him ten years to live and two years to write. Sure, some singers pore laboriously over lyrics and melodies, but some plug out classic tunes in no time flat. Here's a tip of the cap to seven speed demon songwriters who whipped up some of their biggest hits in a matter of hours—if that.

1. MOTT THE HOOPLE, “ALL THE YOUNG DUDES”

Perennially underachieving Mott the Hoople almost called it quits in 1972 before David Bowie—probably assuming the messianic role of his glam rock alter ego, Ziggy Stardust—swooped in to save the band. He offered up “Suffragette City” if it meant the band would stave off breakup plans. Mott the Hoople’s bassist, Pete Overend Watts, turned it down.

Bowie called Watts two hours later, saying: “I’ve written a song for you since we talked, which could be great.” That song, penned by Bowie while sitting cross-legged on the floor of a room in Regent Street, London in front of Mott vocalist Ian Hunter, was “All the Young Dudes.”

2. THE ROLLING STONES, “(I CAN’T GET NO) SATISFACTION”

Guitarist Keith Richards was passed out in the Jack Tar Harrison Hotel in Clearwater, Floridawhen he woke up, pulled out the tape recorder he carried with him, and recorded the riff to “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” Richards recorded himself saying “Can’t get no satisfaction” before dropping his guitar pick and falling back asleep.

When he woke up and played back his tape, it was “two minutes of ‘Satisfaction’ and forty minutes of me snoring.” Richards worried that the inspiration for the riff drew from Martha and the Vandella’s “Dancing in the Street,” but the song (and guitar hook) stuck.

3. BLUR, “SONG 2”

Blur never settled on exactly how long they spent writing and recording “Song 2”—the track’s working title in the studio—but the bandmates agree they came up with the hit in all of its improvised “woo-hoo!” glory in ten minutes to half an hour.

Lead singer Damon Albarn dismissed the hit as “just headbanging,” but producer Stephen Street claims Albarn wrote the song’s nonsensical hook on the fly. Street recalls, “Damon went ‘woo hoo” because he had nothing else prepared.”

4. QUEEN AND DAVID BOWIE, “UNDER PRESSURE”

The Thin White Duke proved his marathon songwriting chops once again when he and Queen spent “an extremely long night” (according to Queen guitar slinger Brian May) in a jam session at Queen’s Mountain Studios in Switzerland. Bowie took charge of the song’s lyrics while Freddie Mercury spearheaded the music songwriting.

Mercury’s improvised scat singing from early in the jam session made the official cut, a song Queen debuted live quickly, though Bowie and May didn’t love the song. When the song was recorded and mixed (nothing was written before the session), Bowie and Queen went for pizza, according to Roger Taylor.

5. R.E.M., “LOSING MY RELIGION”

Guitarist Peter Buck spent a classy evening drinking wine, watching the Nature Channel on mute, and learning how to play the mandolin when he “played ‘Losing My Religion all the way through, and then played really bad stuff for a while.”

Buck woke up with the song’s chords all but forgotten, relearning to play it by listening back to the tape. The impromptu late night recording captured the song’s main riff and chorus—not bad for an unseasoned mandolin player who was lucky to think to tape his laid-back practice session.

6. TEARS FOR FEARS, “MAD WORLD”

Brooding Brit Curt Smith told the Boston Globe, “I remember it being written in an hour or two in Roland’s little flat above a pizza place.” Smith and Tears For Fears bassist Roland Orzabal penned it as the first single of the band’s 1982 album The Hurting. In the liner notes for the record’s 1999 rerelease, Orzabal confessed that his flat probably wasn’t the best place to pen a track called “Mad World": “That came when I lived above a pizza restaurant in Bath and I could look out onto the centre of the city. Not that Bath is very mad—I should have called it 'Bourgeois World.'"

7. DAVID BOWIE, “LIFE ON MARS?”

Bowie quipped that writing “Life on Mars?” — a parody of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” cover — was “easy” in a 2008 article in the Mail on Sunday, and in true, flamboyant Bowie fashion, it was.

I took a walk to Beckenham High Street to catch a bus to Lewisham to buy shoes and shirts but couldn't get the riff out of my head. Jumped off two stops into the ride and more or less loped back to the house up on Southend Road. Workspace was a big empty room with a chaise lounge; a bargain-price art nouveau screen ('William Morris,' so I told anyone who asked); a huge overflowing freestanding ashtray and a grand piano. Little else. I started working it out on the piano and had the whole lyric and melody finished by late afternoon. Nice.

A Indústria da Música Cresceu Um Pouco em Termos de Receita em 2015

The Recorded Music Industry Actually Grew In Terms Of Revenue In 2015

First of all thanks to Hugh McIntyre for this article.

An image taken from the RIAA’s “News and Notes on 2015 RIAA Shipment and Revenue Statistics” report (image courtesy of the RIAA).

For a while there, it really seemed like the music industry was going to disappear, as revenues shrunk year after year, and there didn’t appear to be a solution to the problem. Now, for the first time in what seems like an eternity (especially to those in the business), things are starting to turn around, and the industry might be back on track,.

According to a report released on Tuesday by the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), sales of recorded music amounted to $7 billion in 2015. That figure represents a 0.9% increase from the year prior, and while that may be a growth of less than one percent, that is still progress that is very, very welcome. The RIAA reports that increased revenues brought in from all types of streaming services offset the loss of digital downloads and physical purchases, which have been dipping for years now.

For the first time ever, streaming came out on top when looking at both how much money the categories (streaming, digital, and physical recorded music) brought in and what percentage of the total it constitutes. Streaming now accounts for 34.3% of all recorded music revenues in the U.S., while digital downloads are responsible for 34%, physical revenues are at 28.8%, and syncs are collectively at only 2.9%.

The report separates streaming services into three categories: on-demand (such as Spotify and Apple Music), radio services (like Pandora and SiriusXM), and “non-subscription on-demand options” (YouTube), but grouped all three together when examining the industry as a whole. According to the report, all three of those streaming types saw increases in monies earned last year, and for the first time ever, streaming revenues topped $2 billion. In fact, revenues for the streaming industry increased by a whopping 29% to $2.4 billion.

2015 saw companies like Spotify add huge numbers of new customers, as well as a fair percentage convert from free options to paid ones that offer no ads and more features. At the same time, new entrants came to the market, such as Apple AAPL -0.56% Music and Tidal, and those companies added several million paying subscribers to the total pool.

Digital revenues now account for 70% of all money brought in by recorded music, which is up from 67% in 2014. Part of the reason why that number jumped is because now digital syncs of tracks is included in those earnings, but the category is growing rapidly even without that add on. It will be shocking if streaming doesn’t gain even more ground when this same report is updated to see how well the industry performed in 2016.