STREAMING DRIVES GROWTH FOR ITALIAN RECORDED MUSIC INDUSTRY IN 2014

27 January 2015 - Press release

The Italian recorded music industry’s revenues grew by about 4 per cent to €122 million in 2014, according to Deloitte in its annual review of record companies’ income member to Italian trade body FIMI.

38 per cent of all music sales in Italy are now digitally generated, compared to 31 per cent in 2013.

Income from music streaming services such as Timmusic, Spotify, Google Play, Deezer, YouTube and Vevo constituted the fastest-growing sector.  Streaming revenues increased more than 80 per cent.  Subscriptions to premium services increased by 82 per cent, while ad-supported 'free-to-consumer' streaming increased by 84 per cent.

Streaming accounts for the 57 per cent of the digital market and 22 per cent of total recorded music revenues.

Downloads of albums and singles fell by 15 per cent in 2014.  Downloads account for the 43 per cent of the digital market.

Although revenue from the sale of physical albums declined by 5 per cent, this rate of decrease was better than expected, and it should not be overlooked that physical formats still account for the 62 per cent of the Italian market.  Within this trend there was a strong increase from vinyl LPs, which saw revenue growth of 84 per cent.  This figure represented 3 per cent of total album income in 2014.