Austrian Music Market Makes Gains Thanks to 86 Percent Jump in Streaming Revenue
The Austrian music market saw revenue of 145.4 million euro in 2017, up over 6 percent from the previous year, according to a new report by IFPI Austria.
The Austrian music market saw revenue of 145.4 million euro ($180.2 million) in 2017, up over 6 percent from the previous year, according to a new report by IFPI Austria. As is the case in most other markets, music streaming saw a huge increase in Austria, to the tune of 86 percent year-over-year to 32.6 million euro ($40.41 million).
But that streaming total is less than half of what physical products, including CDs, DVD and vinyl, generated during the period, with 64.8 million euro ($80.32 million). Roughly 7.8 million euro ($9.6 million) of that came from vinyl sales, which increased 10 percent on the year.
The dwindling music downloads market still managed to account for 13.5 million euro ($16.7 million) of the total market, while an additional 6 million euro ($7.4 million) was made with merchandising product and the licensing of music for movies or other publicity.
Back to streaming, the main share of the 29.2 million euro ($36 million) for audio streaming was made by subscription services including Spotify, Deezer, Apple Music and Amazon. An additional million-or-so euro was generated by advertising-based audio streaming, like Spotify’s free tier, and another 2.3 million euro ($2.8 million) came from ad-based video streams, mainly via YouTube.
In a statement, IFPI Austria president Dietmar Lienbacher said that while the increase in music listening is to applauded, “the artists and labels do not [receive fair renumeration] for their substantial share of the digital music-consumption.”
Lienbacher added, “The reason for this massive and unfair distortion of the market is the unclear responsibility of User Uploaded Content (UUC) services, lead by YouTube… No less than 82 percent of all YouTube users claim that they use this service to get musical content. The music labels, despite the radical technological changes, never stopped to invest in artists and innovative business models. Nevertheless we demand from our technology partners to pay fair licenses when they make billion turnover with our content.”