[Roger Press]

I love the French. But what’s with the French? Can’t get my mind around this. The pandemic is leading to more and more streaming around the world. Why not France? It is their national character? Well let’s read Music Ally and do the work to understand this.

 

…

 

France recorded music revenues grew by just 0.1% in 2020

The 2020 figures are in for another big recorded music market, France, and they show only a tiny rise of 0.1% for the year of Covid-19. Industry body Snep’s annual figures showed revenues of €781m (around $935.3m) last year, which the organisation sees as “proof of the solidity of its economic model, which has managed to stay the course despite a context completely disrupted by the health crisis”.

That interpretation might be questioned, however, since other big music markets like the US, UK and Germany all saw stronger growth in 2020 despite Covid-19. That said, 0.1% growth is a better outcome than the 9% decline for the Japanese recorded music industry last year.

In France, physical music sales fell by 20% to €184m last year, while digital revenues grew by 18% to €474m. Streaming grew by 20.6% to €453m, with the number of paid music subscriptions growing from 7.2m in 2019 to 8.7m in 2020. “for the first time in France, streaming subscriptions alone generated more than half of the annual turnover,” reported Snep.

8.7m is the number of paid subscriptions, but thanks to family plans, the number of people using premium streaming in France is around 12 million, with another 7.4 million free streamers. That means 19.4 million French people using music streaming services overall – 30% of the population according to Snep.

The family plan figure may come in handy for future comparisons with other markets too: in France, 27.5% of premium streamers are on a plan that somebody else pays for. For more context on the French market, read our last country profile, which was published in October 2020.

Attachments:

You must be logged in to view attached files.

[Author]

Posts