• European cultural & creative sectors account for 4,4% of EU GDP and 7.6 million full-time jobs.
• The European music sector specifically is supporting 2 million jobs, contributing €81.9 billion in gross value added to GDP, and exporting €9.7 billion worth of goods and services to countries outside the EU27 and UK.
• Europe generates nearly a third of total recorded music revenues worldwide.
• Europe’s share of the global recorded music market was 30.1% in 2021, with a total of $7,8bn revenues – a growth of 15.4% year on year ($6.5bn in 2020). It’s the highest growth in 20 years for the region..
• Streaming revenue in Europe grew by 20.1% in 2021, to $4.8bn, representing 61.5% of the total European recorded music market.
• Ad-supported video streaming revenues grew by 41.3% to reach $477.8m and exceed ad-supported audio revenues for the first time.).
• Performing rights revenues increased by 6% to a total of $1.3bn in 2021 – 16.7% of total European revenues. Europe remained the top region for performance rights revenues, accounting for over 50% of the world’s performance rights income in 2021.
  
• In Europe, physical revenues increased by 15.1% to amount to $1.3bn (16.7% of total European revenues. Europe also remained one of the top contributors of Vinyl revenues’ growth worldwide, as Vinyl sales increased by 41.6% year-on-year in the region.
• In 2021, Europe represented around a quarter of all users of subscription services globally.
• Copyright-intensive sectors account for 9.9 million EU jobs.
• Copyright-intensive industries make a positive contribution to the EU’s trade balance: net export of €15bn.

Music industry

• In 2021, global recorded music revenues totalled $25.9 billion. An increase of 18.5% compared to 2020 ($21.6bn).
• The music industry’s digital revenues (including streaming) now represent 69.3% of total revenues (2021).
• Streaming revenues specifically grew by 24.3% (year-on-year) to represent 65% of the total market (2021) – $16.9bn.
• Subscription streaming increased by 21.9% to represent this year again the bulk of total streaming revenues (72.8% – $12.3bn), while ad-supported streams and video streaming revenues also increased by 25.5% (up to $2.7bn) and 39.9% (up to $1.9bn) respectively (year-on-year change). The growth in ad-supported audio and video streaming revenues was helped by a growth in global social media platforms (e.g. TikTok, Facebook, Instgram), but revenues from video stream continue to represent the smallest revenue stream across all streaming revenues by sub-format.
• In 2021, streaming revenue alone exceeded total industry revenue in each year from 2009 to 2016. Over 50,000 artists generated $10,000 from Spotify alone — and likely over $40,000 across all recorded revenue sources, meaning that more and more artists are able to reach this milestone, and they are not coming necessarily from the top music markets. 34% of them live in countries outside the IFPI’s top ten music markets (Australia, Canada, China, Italy, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea, the U.K., and the U.S.). In addition, on Spotify in 2021, only 12% of U.S. streams were of the top 50 artists.
  
• Number of users of paid subscription accounts grew by 20.5% to 523 million in 2021 (443 million in 2020), accounting for 54.6% of the total revenue growth in 2021.
• Streaming aside however, digital revenues saw a drop of 10.7% this year, accounting for $1.1bn.
• Synchronisation revenues increased by 22%, accounting for $549m and representing 2.1% of total revenues.
• Performance rights revenues increased year-on-year by 4% to a total of $2.4bn, representing 9.4% of total revenues.
• Physical sales increased by 16.1% to reach $5bn in 2021, the highest level since 2017 and first increase in 20 years. They represented this year 19.2% of total revenues. Vinyl sales were up $477m this year (51.3% growth) to reach $1.4bn.
• 50% of top tracks played on radio and downloaded in Europe are American.
• Record companies invested $4.5 bn in research and development and marketing in 2015, representing 27% of these companies’ revenues.
• As a whole, the music industry invested 16.9% of its revenue in research and development for new artists in 2015. It is higher than other research-intensive industries (e.g. pharmaceuticals and biotechnology 14.4%, software and computer services 10.1%, aerospace and defence 4.5%, etc.).
• IPR‐intensive industries pay significantly higher wages than other industries, with a wage premium of more than 40%, with copyright-intensive sectors having the highest premium (69%).

Digital services and social media

• There are more than 230 digital music services available across the EU, providing access to more than 40 million tracks.
• 6 of the top 10 most liked people on Facebook are music artists (updated: June 2016).
• 7 of the top 10 most followed people on Twitter are music artists (updated: June 2016).
• 9 of the top 10 most watched videos of all time on YouTube are music videos. Out of the top 20, 18 are music videos (updated: June 2016).

The value gap