European Music Industry in Numbers

  • 99% of music businesses are micro, small or medium enterprises – “the independents”. 
  • The music sector consists of thousands of independents and 4 multinationals – “the majors”
  • The independents are the innovators and early adopters, discovering new talent and producing 80% of all new releases.
  • The collective market share of the independents is nearly 20%. Previously this was 40%.
  • The biggest independent now has only 1.5% of the market.  Previously this was 7%. The biggest major has over 40%.
  • The combined market share of the majors is more than 80%, climbing to a massive 95% for hits and radio.
  • The value of European recorded music sales in 2006 was 8.2 billion € (30% of world music sales).
  • Culture is bigger than any of chemicals, automobiles or ICT manufacturing.
  • Europe generates half of the world’s publishing revenue and one third of recording sales.
  • Independents provide more jobs than the majors put together.
  • Impala represents over 4000 independent music companies and national associations.

Market
The global music market was worth USD 32 billion in 2003, with total unit sales of 2.7 billion while the European music market was worth USD 11.8 billion.

Five major record companies (Universal, Warner, EMI, Sony and BMG) control 74.7% of the world market (with Universal counting for 23.5%), and 80.6% of the European market.

In 2003 the market share of independents on the world market was 25.3%, and in Europe 19.4% (against 20.5% in 2002).


Music sales ranking by value 2003 (top 5)
% of world sales

1

USA

37 %

2

Japan

15.32%

3

UK

10%

4

France

6.6%

5

Germany

6.37%

Format
Global sales of CD albums dropped by 8.9% while sales of singles and cassettes fell by 18.9% and 27.2% respectively. Moreover, music video – which represents 6.4% of music sales – saw a 45.6% value growth overall, driven by growth in DVD, up 66%.

European markets saw a general decrease in CD volume (- 4.8%. 90% of the USD 32 billion world market sales is made of CD albums) whereas music sales fell by 5% in units and 7.7% in value.

Internet sales have been growing in the major European markets, for example in the UK the share has more than doubled in the past three years reaching 8% in 2003.

(Source : The recording industry in numbers 2004 – IFPI)

link : http://www.ifpi.org/

Music in Europe –Profile of the European Music Sector– download here (PDF)


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