German music sales grew 9% in 2020 despite the pandemic with digital reaching 71.5% of the market, up 24.6% from 2019 according to BVMI, the German recording industry association. Retail revenues from recorded music sales and proceeds from the streaming business amounted to €1.79 Bn, up 9% on 2019, with 71.5%, or a good three-quarters of sales, coming from online music use. Audio streaming increased by 24.6% on the already high level of the previous year (55.5% market share in 2019) and thus comes to a share of 63.4% of the total market. In contrast, CD sales suffered significantly from closed stores (-18%), but remains clearly the second-strongest format in the German recorded market with a 21.6% share of sales. Following far behind, back in third place for the first time, is vinyl with an overall market share of 5.5%. After another significant increase of 24.7%, vinyl is keeping the physical product alive. After a drop of 24.8%, downloads now only occupy 4th place at 4.2 % of sales.
Significant momentum in streaming drove overall digital business growth of 20.3% in 2020, while sales of physical recorded music slipped significantly by 11.7%, mitigated by the success of vinyl records.
Dr. Florian Drücke, Chairman & CEO of BVMI said, “What was already apparent in the summer has been confirmed: The good digital positioning of our member companies over the past few years means that our industry is currently coming through the crisis well in terms of total sales – even more so, due to the pandemic-related restrictions on public life, fans have increasingly supplied themselves with music in the digital space, which has given us an overall growth of 9%. Without a doubt, that’s very good news for now. However, it should not obscure two things: Firstly, as we all know, artists and our sister industries, above all the live business, have been dramatically affected by the lockdowns, and the long-term consequences of the concert cancellations within our closely interlinked industry world are not yet foreseeable.”
