Bye, good old Compact Disc: After almost 40 years, the digital sound carrier soon has its day. For the first time, sales of music streamed more than CD sales last year.
The turnover with songs from the net rose in 2018 by more than a third to 734 million euros. The streaming achieved as the main source of money in the music industry, a market share of 46.4 percent. CD revenues declined by 20 percent to 579 million euros, which corresponds to a market share of 36.4 percent.
Overall, the German music market remained stable with a decline in sales of 0.4 percent to 1.58 billion euros, as the Federal Association of Music Industry announced. "After four years of growth, the industry turnover is now in the second year on a plateau, which is not bad news," said association director Florian pressures.
Streaming is the hope of the music industry, especially because the subscription models with monthly payments of around ten euros per user bring their stable revenues. Press rated the plus in streaming as "very good sign" for the coming years. He sees it as an indicator of the increasing willingness of users to pay - "the lion's share of sales in the audio streaming area is eventually generated by the premium subscriptions."
Competition through Youtube
The turn of events in the German music market had been announced: Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer and Co had already brought in the first half of 2018 more sales than the aged CD.
The downloads, which still contribute 7.8 percent of sales at 123 million euros, are of little significance. The small boom of the record, which had recorded constant growth in recent years, seems to be over for the time being: the vinyl revenues fell in 2018 by 5.2 percent to 70 million euros.
The industry is still targeting free music consumption on YouTube, for example. "A message to all those who still think user upload platforms should not have to pay higher licenses: according to recent studies, fans consume music at about equal time share through audio and video streaming offerings," said Press ,
However, this is not reflected in sales. "While audio streaming is now coming close to 50 percent of industry revenue, streaming music through video services brings in just 2.4 percent back to the creatives and their partners."