Streaming affects the music sales in Spain

Spaniards spent a total of 70.6 million euros in recorded music in the first half of 2015, a year-on-year increase of 10.9% over the same period last year. This improvement can be entirely placed on to the momentum of streaming, with revenues almost 40% higher considering both subscriptions and ad-supported services. Compared to rising figures published for other European markets, Spain shows a similar trend. However, recovering of the Spanish market is still modest with a volume similar to that of 2011, far from the revenues of the beginning of the century, marked by a severe fall of more than 80% since 2001.

Streaming confirms as the lifeline of a sector still suffering the severe punishment of the global crisis and the plundering caused by piracy. 2014 was the first year with positive results after twelve years of decrease, and this tendency is now confirmed in H1 2015. The success of streaming services such as Spotify, Deezer, Napster, YouTube or Vevo also allows reaching an important milestone: for the first time in Spain, digital sales overcome physical and downloads and online streams account for 53.9% of the market, while carriers such as CD and vinyl represent the remaining 46.1%.

In fact, streaming is the only form of consumption that increases in this period, while all others decrease. Sales of physical carriers drop from 33.2 to 31.6 million euros, 4.9% decrease. As a result, revenues from streaming almost equal those coming from the sales of CD and vinyl: 30.6 million in this first half, 39.8% more compared to the same period of 2014 (21.9 million).

The rest of digital consumption modalities also experience a slight decline. Download of songs and albums decrease from 7 to 6.8 million euros in value, 3.7% lower. And mobile products (ring tones, ringback tones) are more and more losing importance and today only account for 670,000 euros, almost 9 per cent lower than in 2014.

In short, all modalities shrink but the strength of streaming let the Spanish phonographic industry see the exercise with certain hope for the second and ultimate half. Results from now to close of 2015 will depend on the Christmas campaign performance and the result of initiatives such as New Music Fridays, launched last 10th July, as well as of the development of new Apple Music service.

Source: http://www.promusicae.es
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