Signs of a new order are emerging after the long, slow collapse of traditional music publishing. The Napster effect, which since 1999 spread free, notionally illegal copies of music from person to person, delivered a body blow to music industry revenue. It would never again see the heights of 1998, when revenue peaked at $27.5 billion, and music sales began what for long looked like a terminal decline.

It lasted 15 years. Last month, the industry celebrated its first growth in revenues since the ‘digital disruption’ of music began. At $16.5 billion, sales are still 40 percent down from their peak, and physical music sales, which account for two thirds of industry revenue, are still in decline. However, the rise of digital sales and subscription models, to $5.6 billion, have for the first time since 1998 lifted overall revenues a modest, but positive, 0.3 percent from the year before, according to figures from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, a venerable 80-year-old trade association.