One beautiful young African-american female singer recording album in the professional music studio. Female vocalist wearing headphones and singing into microphone in recording studio.
The vinyl’s revival among music aficionados has continued on an upward trajectory for more than a decade, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry or IFPI’s latest report shows.
The Global Music Report 2023 shows that while the convenience of streaming music at the touch of a keypad continues to hold sway, tangible collections like vinyl and the compact disc or CD have defied the odds.
The report indicates that physical format revenues accounted for 17.5 percent share of the overall market after raking in $4.6 billion in 2022. The 4.0 percent growth in physical format revenues nevertheless pales in comparison to subscription audio streaming revenues that increased by 10.3 per cent to $12.7 billion on the back of 589 million users.
While there was not enough in the report to vindicate apocalyptic predictions of music aficionados seeing the end of CDs as a mass-market product, CD and other physical revenues—unlike the vinyl—saw a slight decline (0.4 percent). Physical saw its strongest performance in Asia once again, with the region accounting for almost half the global revenues (49.8 percent).
Ms Frances Moore, the IFPI chief executive, says her organisation’s latest report shows the constant state of flux of the industry underlined by an ever-changing “artist-label partnership.”
“Record companies’ investment and innovation has helped make music even more globally interconnected than ever,” she noted, adding, “This is driving music’s development whilst enabling fans to seize the expanding opportunities to embrace and celebrate their own local artists and culture.”
Ms Moore, however, acknowledged a number of challenges not least “a greater number of actors seek[ing] to benefit from music whilst playing no part in investing in and developing it.”
According to the report, there were revenue gains across nearly all format categories in 2022. While streaming continued to dominate the global revenue mix, growth rates across all formats were lower than the prior year. The exceptional growth in 2021 was partly attributable to a post-pandemic boost.
“Streaming continues to drive revenues in sub-Saharan Africa. Increases in smartphone penetration and a reduction of data costs have enabled territories previously unmonetised in the physical era to contribute increased revenues to the global music economy,” Ms Angela Ndambuki, the IFPI Regional Director for sub-Saharan Africa, told Sunday Monitor.
Recorded music
Revenues from performance rights such as the use of recorded music by broadcasters and public venues grew by 8.6 percent. The report indicates that they reached $2.5 billion in 2022. Synchronisation, or revenues from the use of recorded music in advertising, film, games and TV, maintained strong increases, posting another year of growth exceeding 20 percent and reaching $640.4 million.
IFPI’s report is the definitive annual review of the global recorded music market. It provides an overview of top line music revenues. It is widely seen as the voice of the recording industry worldwide, representing more than 8,000 record company members across the globe. It works to promote the value of recorded music, campaign for the rights of record producers, and expand the commercial uses of recorded music around the world.
According to the report, recorded music revenues grew in every region around the world in 2022. Asia grew by 15.4 percent with its largest market, Japan, seeing growth of 5.4 percent. Elsewhere, China—the second largest market—grew by 28.4 percent, becoming a global top five market for the first time.
Australasia experienced growth of 8.1 percent, an increase on the prior year’s growth rate of 4.7 percent. Australia remained a top 10 market globally and New Zealand saw a rise in streaming revenues push the overall market to growth of 8.0 percent.
Revenues in Europe, the second largest recorded music region in the world, grew by 7.5 percent, with the region’s three biggest markets all posting gains—the United Kingdom (5.4 percent); Germany (2.2 percent) and France (7.7 percent).
Latin America saw gains of 25.9 percent, maintaining more than 10 years of regional increases. Middle East and North Africa (Mena), previously the fastest growing market in 2021, saw an increase of 23.8 percent in streaming.
Africa scorecard
With a steep increase of 34.7 percent, and the only region to see more than 30 percent growth, sub-Saharan Africa became the fastest growing region for recorded music revenues in 2022, the report shows. Growth was boosted by a strong climb in revenues in South Africa, the region’s largest market.
“Sub-Saharan Africa was the fastest growing region in 2022 and was the only region to grow above 30 per cent year-on-year. This was aided by really impressive growth in streaming revenues, which have more than doubled since 2019,” Ms Ndambuki told Sunday Monitor, adding, “Overall, this is a very positive picture for the region as more consumers continue to engage with recorded music across Sub-Saharan Africa.”
As to what South Africa is doing right that other countries in sub-Saharan Africa are failing to fix, Ndambuki said: “The performance of South Africa has been singled out for the region as it accounts for almost 80 percent of revenues in sub-Saharan Africa and hence the performance of South Africa is the single biggest driver of the region’s performance. It should be noted that other markets in the region also recorded strong growth.”
The USA and Canada region—the world’s largest in revenue terms—grew by 5.0 percent in 2022. The USA grew by 4.8 percent, exceeding $10 billion for the first time.
When asked if the music industry has recovered from the effects of Covid-19, Ms Ndambuki replied: “2022 still saw lingering effects of the pandemic on the recorded music sector, with certain markets still not recovering to pre-pandemic levels in performance rights. However overall, the impact of the pandemic on 2022 performance was minimal, all markets globally recorded growth for the second consecutive year, demonstrative of a strong performance for the industry.”
mbamuturaki@ug.nationmedia.com