How music is heard today: In Germany over 80 percent digital. Vinyl remains at a stable six percent of sales.
The “Bundesverband Musikindustrie” (BVMI) has started the industry statistics machine and given fresh figures for Germany. A few days ago, the new US survey system “Luminate” from the market research giant “Nielsen” pushed ahead with the “2023 Midyear Music Report”. Researchers on both sides of the Atlantic say: Streaming is king.
“Luminate” counts around 3.3 billion streaming views in the audio and video segment on a global basis. Compared to the first half of 2022, this is still an increase of 30.8 percent. Luminate identifies Asia as the fastest growing region, up 107 percent, as well as South Africa (up 83 percent) and Latin America (up 70 percent). The comparatively high proportion of young people in the total population is reflected in these figures. After all, the USA reports growth of around 15 percent for what is traditionally the largest music market in the world.
For Germany, the responsible federal association reports the beautiful sentence: “The cake is getting bigger overall, everyone involved will benefit from it”. In toto one speaks of “solid numbers” in the Berlin Linienstraße. Compared to the first half of 2022, an increase of 6.6 percent. The CD, sometimes also called “Silverling”, which is no longer surrounded by any sexiness, continued to decrease by 4.1 percent, but still contributed 11.2 percent to total sales.
Vinyl continues to grow, including hip-hop trinket boxes and retro 180-gram birthday gifts. The association reports a 6.3 percent “growth spurt” and a 6.0 percent market share for the first six months of 2023.
The “download” (which once caused the physical sound carrier system to wobble via Napster and Co.), on the other hand, continues to decline by 4.9 percent. One could also paraphrase the Buggles’ hit single from 1979: “Streaming killed the download star”.
BVMI CEO Florian Drücke summarizes all of this in well-chosen words: “Music sales in Germany continue to develop positively despite the overall complex economic situation. As is well known, streaming has been the driver for many years, which has significantly increased the market, the famous cake, which ultimately benefits everyone involved, the companies as well as the artists. Unfortunately, this fact is being ignored in the current unbalanced debate about the streaming market.”
Nevertheless, it cannot be assumed that the debate about “distributive justice” will die down from the rising salary in the music business (after this overall positive interim result). Rather the opposite is to be expected. The scramble for the proverbial cake is still in full swing…