The Snep (national union of phonographic editions) gave the tuesday morning balance sheet of the music market for the year 2019. It confirms the trend according to which listening in legal streaming supplants physical sales ... and that the market is doing well much better ! Nekfeu, Clara Luciani, Angèle, Maître Gims, Vitaa and Slimane were among the best selling albums last year. But the novelty is that more and more people subscribe to Spotify, Deezer and all the others, for around 10 euros per month, and that this money benefits artists who have suffered from illegal downloading.
Paid subscriptions, the first source of income ahead of the CD
The French music market thus displayed "sustained growth of 5.4%" in 2019, the fourth consecutive year of recovery since the start of the crisis in the 2000s, Snep said on Tuesday. This is a level of growth comparable to that of 2016 (+ 5.4%) after the last two slightly positive years in 2017 (+ 3.9%) and 2018 (+ 1.8%). This "encouraging result is the fruit of the dynamism of streaming (59% of sales)" and especially paid subscriptions, "first source of income before the CD, they rose 18.5%", said Snep in its report. In 2018, streaming already represented half of music sales.
The number of digital subscriptions has "significantly increased (+1.7 million) and crossed the 10% mark for the first time in 2019" of the French population. It is now "with family offers, 9.4 million French people who listen to music via paid streaming". "Up 18.5%, paid subscriptions now generate almost 80% of streaming revenue," further details Snep.
>> Watch all of Raphaëlle Duchemin's programs in replay and podcast here
The return of vinyl is confirmed
Vinyl also confirms its comeback, with a 12% increase in sales. And not only for groups that have a few years behind them. 42% of vinyl buyers are under 30, and a quarter of the best-selling records are first albums, such as Angèle, Lomepal, Aya Nakamura.
Snep still tempers this success: "We are far from the golden age of the industry, but practices are changing, and each player in the industry is trying to find his account". No reason, therefore, to immediately declare victory: with 625 million euros for physical and digital sales, "the market just catches up with that of ten years ago (628 million euros) and does not represent still only 44% of that of 2002 (1.4 billion euros) ", notes SNEP in its report.