Berlin (dpa) – Thanks to large increases in audio streaming, the German music industry has put up with the consequences of the corona pandemic in sales in 2020.
“The income from sales of sound carriers and revenues from the streaming business amounted to 1.79 billion euros, which is an increase of nine percent compared to 2019,” said the Federal Association of the Music Industry <!––> (BVMI) on Thursday in Berlin.
71.5 percent, or almost three quarters of sales, resulted from online music usage. After an already high level in 2019 with 55.5 percent market share, this was even 63.4 percent at the 2020 annual financial statements.
At the beginning of January, the BVMI announced that, according to a special evaluation by the market research institute GfK <!––> Entertainment in the previous year, more than 139 billion music streams were recorded in this country – almost a third more than in 2019 (107 billion) and even three quarters more than in 2018 (79.5 billion).
According to industry figures, the temporary closure of stores was clearly noticeable in CD sales: The share of total sales fell again by 18 percent, but at 21.6 percent the silver digital disc is still the second-strongest format on the German music market. The vinyl record (5.5 percent of the total market share) follows at a clear distance – for the first time in a long time in third place – ahead of the increasingly insignificant downloads (4.2 percent).
According to its own information, the Federal Association of the Music Industry represents the interests of around 200 record producers and companies that represent more than 80 percent of the German music market.
The “considerable dynamism in the streaming sector” caused the digital business to grow by a good fifth (20.3 percent) in 2020. In contrast, sales with so-called physical sound carriers decreased by more than a tenth (11.7 percent). The “good digital positioning of our member companies over the past few years” has alleviated the corona crisis, said the head of the association, Florian Drücke <!––> on Thursday.
However, this should not hide the fact that artists and the live music business “are known to have been dramatically affected by the lockdowns and the long-term consequences of the concert cancellations within our closely interlinked industry are not yet foreseeable”. From BVMI’s point of view, there is still resentment about the regulation of copyright law. Because creatives and their partners should actually «better participate in the sales of user upload platforms such as YouTube».
“Unfortunately, in Germany there is still a lack of an eye for the realities of the industry in the cultural and creative industries – and also for how money is earned with creative content,” said Drücke of the German press agency. “This industry is one of the fastest growing branches of the economy, is highly digital and plays a major role in Europe. The compromise within the framework of the European Copyright Directive reflects this – it would be all the more important to implement it in Germany without deviating special regulations. ”
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210304-99-684846 / 2
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