Nearly four fifths of music in Germany will soon be digital according to the BVMI, Germany’s recorded music industry association. Record sales and revenues from streaming generated a total of €1.96 Bn, compared to 2020 that is an increase of 10%. By far the largest part was generated digitally, 76.4% of the income comes from online music.
Audio streaming, which has been growing dynamically for years, again increased by 18.6%. The growth curve is slightly less than in the previous year (2020: +24.6%), but this form of music use from the cloud was able to increase its share of the total market to 68.3% compared to the previous year (2020: 63.4%). CDs remain in second place with a sales share of 16.3% – a decline of 16.7% compared to the previous year. Vinyl is again in third place in the format ranking. Thanks to sales growth of 20.1%, the vinyl has a respectable 6% share of the total market in the age of audio streaming. Not least because of this, the contribution of the physical market to sales remains relatively stable at 23.6%, despite a slight decline of 9.1%.
Dr Florian Drucke, CEO of the BVMI said, “The market is now growing significantly for the third year in a row with a total turnover of €1.96 Bn, the revenues in 2021 are again approaching the level of 2002. Nevertheless, this very positive news should not distract from the fact that the hardship in the live sector is still immense. Against this background, we urgently hope that the artists and our industry colleagues there will be able to plan better, which is now slowly becoming apparent.”
