GERMANY (CelebrityAccess) – Germany’s streaming numbers grew by over 40% in 2018 to an all-time record high of 79.5 billion, according to German music industry association Bundesverband Musikindustrie (BVMI).
While CD sales saw a 23% decline in the last year––a first for the format in the German music market––there was still an impressive 48.2m units sold in 2017.
Commenting on the report, Dr. Florian Drucke, CEO of the BVMI, said: “Looking at the sales in the past year, we see a continued strong growth in the area of streaming. A particularly pleasing development is the trend in premium accounts which make up 86 per cent of the audio streams.
“Despite the well-known downward trends, the industry has ensured a strong market in physical products remains; it is well-known that aside from Japan, nowhere in the world are as many CDs sold as here in Germany. Downloads and vinyl also continued to form an important part of the format portfolio of labels and of fans in 2018.”
According to BVMI, in Germany in 2018, downloads represented a total of 49m purchases (7.5m were albums and 41.5m individual tracks), while vinyl records represented 3m purchases, and physical music video formats such as DVD and Blu-ray represented 2.6m purchases.
