Germany’s Music Industry Association (BVMI) has released figures showing that sales figures for Germany’s music industry in 2017 have come in at nearly the same level as in 2016.
Streaming continues its robust growth with physical recordings significantly less in demand. Revenue from the sale of CDs, records, DVDs and downloads as well as from streaming services totalled €1.588 billion in 2017 which marks only a slight decline of 0.3% compared to the previous year.
The digital market grew by 22.7% driven once again by strong increases in audio streaming (+42.8%). Although sales of physical products fell by 14.3% in 2017 they still account for 53.4% of the market. The physical business still tops its digital counterpart, which had a share of 46.6 percent in 2017.
CDs remained the strongest turnover segment (45.4% market share), followed by audio streaming (34.6% market share) and downloads, which lost 19.3% revenue and accounted for only 9.9% of revenues. Vinyl continued to grow (+5.1%) – albeit not as strongly as in previous years – thus accounting for a 4.6% share of sales throughout the year.
BVMI chairman Dr Florian Drücke considers the ongoing digitisation of Germany’s music market a positive development:
‘There continues to be a strong pull towards music streaming, which shows that the industry’s diversification strategy is spot on. However, the greater the share of the digital business gets, the more important it is to make sure that creative content can be refinanced in the digital sphere. This means that all forms of online music consumption must be linked to licenses negotiated on the market. Studies carried out by our parent organisation, IFPI, show that almost one-half of music streamed in Germany is done on video streaming services such as YouTube, and yet these services currently contribute only 1.9% to revenues – contrast that with the 34.6% contributed by premium and ad-financed offers from audio streaming services.’
Dr Drücke noted the imbalance in revenues calling it a ‘value gap’ which needed addressing to create a level playing field between online and traditional music revenue creation.
Streaming continues to grow worldwide
With streaming making up 34.6% of music sales in Germany, 50.4 % in UK and 62% in the USA (see Over half UK music is now streamed) the consumption of music using physical media is rapidly becoming a thing of the past.
IFPI, a trade organisation representing the recording industry worldwide has published streaming revenues for the years 2012-2016 in its Global Music Report 2017 which show a near five-fold increase in streaming over this period.
