Streaming in Italy grew by 13.5% in 2024 according to recent figures published by FIMI, the Italian recorded music industry association. For the seventh consecutive year of growth, the Italian recorded music market had an overall increase of 8.5% in 2024, reaching almost half a billion euros (461.2 million) and is now the third-largest market in the EU after Germany and France.
Streaming now represents 67% of total revenues with an increase of 13.5% amounting to €308.1 million. 2024 saw 95 Bn streams during the year (up 31% compared to 2023), with subscriptions up 17.1%. Ad-supported services remained stable only increasing by a modest +0.4%. The video streaming segment also recorded a significant increase (+14.1%), demonstrating how audio-visual content continues to represent an important lever for music consumption.
Despite the continuing decline in downloads (-12.7%), the Italian digital market as a whole reached €312.2 million, with a growth of 13.1% compared to 2023.
Physical products continue to decline
The physical market continues to play an important role in recorded music sales accounting for 13% of total revenues, although overall it recorded a 2.1% decline, settling at €61.3 million. This slowdown is due to the replacement of the Italian Government’s Culture Bonus with the new Culture Cards for income brackets and excellent students, which have provided less incentive for purchasing recorded music.
Vinyl remains the preferred physical medium format for Italian music lovers with a growth of 6.8% (€38.9 million): this is the sixth consecutive year of growth for the format that places Italy as the eighth-largest market globally.
Performance rights also recorded an increase of 2.6%, reaching €74.8 million and covering 16% of total revenues, representing the second source of revenues in the Italian record market after streaming. Synchronizations recorded a 4.8% decline, bringing the segment’s share to just 3% of total revenues: this is the result of an increasingly intense competition in the music licensing market and a slight reduction in investments in this area.
Royalties from Italian Music Exports performed well, reaching a total of €27.95 million in 2024, marking an increase of 13.8%: digital segment is naturally the main driver of this growth, with a significant increase of 24.4%. Overall the growth of Italian music export revenues increased by over €16 million from 2020 to 2024, reaching a growth of 140% in just five years.
Redefining Italian music consumption
The 2024 data confirm the structural transformation of the Italian market, increasingly oriented towards digital and with consumption models based on access rather than ownership: the continuous expansion of paid streaming underlines a change in the listeners habits, with music in 2024 being more oriented towards new releases than the catalogue (82% of streams come from songs released from 2010 onwards) and linked to the local repertoire (45% of total streams), which within the annual charts has gone from occupying 59% to 84% in the last ten years.
This result is linked to the great generational turnover that has not been recorded in other sectors of the Italian cultural industry: from 2014 to 2024, in fact, the average age of the artists present in the annual Top Ten has decreased by 31.7%.
Further information can be obtained from FIMI’s The Italian Record Market (in Italian) which can be downloaded here.
