BERLIN, Germany — The German music market is doing wunderbar. It grew 6.1% in 2022 over the previous year, to 2.07 billion Euros ($2.19 billion), according to the BVMI, the country’s recorded music trade organization. That’s the fourth consecutive year of growth for the market, as well as the first time in 20 years that the business – valued on retail revenue, including VAT – exceeded two billion Euros.
Although Germany came late to streaming, which didn’t overtake the country’s physical sales until 2018, digital accounted for a full 80.3% of retail revenue in 2022, and streaming came in at 73.3%. Total physical sales accounted for 19.7% of revenue.
The CD is still much healthier here than in most other markets, accounting for a full 12.9% of revenue, which makes it the industry’s second most important product after streaming.
Downloads, which never took off in Germany to the extent that they did in most other European markets, accounted for just 2.2%. Other digital revenue, including video streaming, added up to 4.8% of revenue.
Streaming is gaining fast, too: it grew by 14% compared to 2021, while CD sales declined 17.1%.
Within the physical market, vinyl still lags behind CDs, at an even 6%. That’s a significant difference from the U.S., where vinyl sales revenue long since surpassed that of CDs. (Music DVDs and Blu-ray videos accounted for half a percent of revenue, while other physical products accounted for 0.3%.) As in the U.S., vinyl sales are still growing — they were up 6% by revenue — but not as much as in 2021, when they grew 20.1%.
“The fact that the German music industry has taken the 2 billion Euro mark for the first time in two decades is good news of far more than symbolic value,” said BVMI chairman and CEO Florian Drücke. “Looking at streaming, it will be exciting to see how the price increases we have seen recently from the first providers will now play out in the wider market and also how short form videos will be able to monetize even more.”