Berlin, Germany. Photo Credit: Stefan Widua
The German music industry generated €967 million during 2022’s first half, according to a newly released report, with digital having accounted for more than 80 percent of the total.
Berlin’s Federal Music Industry Association (BVMI) revealed this and other performance data for the German recorded music industry in a half-year report today. Per the analysis, the mentioned €967 million (currently $999.11 million) in total revenue marks a 5.5 percent year-over-year boost from H1 2021 and was driven by continued streaming growth.
To be sure, streaming itself is said to have made up 73.3 percent of total revenue in the German music industry during Q1 and Q2 of this year, up 9.1 percent (in revenue) from the same period in 2021. Within the remainder of the digital category, the BVMI communicated that downloads, despite continuing their years-running decline, had generated 2.4 percent of the revenue total, against 4.5 percent for other digital including ringtones and “video streaming.”
On the physical side (19.8 percent of revenue), CD sales dipped by 6.5 percent YoY – compared to a nearly 17 percent falloff between H1 2020 and H1 2021 – and represented 12.8 percent of the European nation’s industry revenue across the six-month stretch. Inversely, vinyl sales increased by double digits but accounted for 6.2 percent of the recorded market.
The remainder of the German music industry’s physical revenue (and total income) derived from singles CDs, DVDs, and Blu-rays, the breakdown shows. Moreover, digital’s 80.2 percent share of overall recorded music revenue in Germany is nearly in line with the figure that the RIAA attached to the U.S. music industry for all of 2021.
Addressing the data in a statement, BVMI chairman and CEO Florian Drücke said in part: “Further growth in the first half of 2022 is very good news, considering the current situation.
“At 5.5 percent, the curve is not pointing quite as steeply upwards as it did at the end of 2021 with a truly outstanding industry increase of 10 percent – however, the growing segments of audio streaming and vinyl continue to develop positively and the general trend towards digital music use, alongside the continued importance of the physical segment, remains unbroken.”
For additional context, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) reported back in March that the global recorded music industry was worth about $25.9 billion during 2021.
As part of this global total, the IFPI attributed 65 percent of the figure to streaming and 19.2 percent to physical. Meanwhile, the organization indicated that Europe had achieved 15.4 percent music industry growth on the year – the third-smallest figure of any region.
Earlier this year, ticketing platform DICE launched in Germany with over 350 shows, and BMG about one week ago unveiled plans to acquire Telamo, which execs billed as “Germany’s largest independent record label” and “the leading player in the market for German Schlager music.”