Germany sees $1.18BN increase in recorded music sales

Despite a complex economic ecosystem in the music industry, Germany sees a 6.6% YoY increase in recorded music sales. This increase brought in an extra $1.18BN to the German industry in the first half of 2023.

Germany held a music industry that had been on the decline with its peak in 2016. This trend began to shift in 2019 when the industry saw an increase from the previous year’s €1.48BN to €1.59BN. Though not a drastic increase, the trend was projected to continue and did just that. The following year, 2020 saw an even greater jump in profit as the industry garnered €1.73BN. The steady increase was a great sign for the German music industry, but the next year showed just how prominent the market increase would become. Reporting a €0.24BN increase between 2020-2021, the industry began to see sky-rocketing increases. Increases that would grow so great that in 2022 the BMVI, or Bundesverband Musikindustrie, the association that represents the German music industry, reported that the German music industry had seen,

Sales of the music industry in Germany exceed the 2-billion-euro mark again
for the first time in 20 years…; the last time this was the case was in 2002 (2.21 bn euros)

This growth is projected to increase well into 2026 with an average projected growth of €0.11BN per year. If the projected trends hold, it would appear the market is trending towards stabilizing at an average of €2.61BN, a feat which would have been unimaginable for the German music industry since the last time the industry crossed €2.0BN in sales profits back in 2002.

Unsurprisingly, this trend towards netting an average of €2.0BN per year has primarily been bolstered by digital music and streaming. It was reported by the BMVI that physical sales dropped 0.8% YoY, Year over Year, and accounted for only 18% of the market. This is a further decrease from the previous recorded year, of which physical sales made up 19.7% of the German music industry’s profit. Audio streaming, on the other hand, has experienced a similar increase as the overall German music industry profits, seeing a 14.0% increase in 2022 and a further 9.7% increase in 2023. As of the writing of this article, these streaming increases mean that audio streaming in Germany accounts for 75.7% of the overall music profits.

It is great that the music industry in Germany has seen a great resurgence in the past few years, but this leads artists within Germany to further issues. Considering the recent report by legendary German producer Dune, streaming as the primary form of getting your music leads to artists acquiring diminishing returns based on streaming revenue rates of all the major music streaming services. Yet, there seems to be no good response to the issue at hand, as vinyl sales, though increasing in popularity, are seeing decreasing returns for producers of vinyl.

Image credits: Photo by
Erwi on Unsplash