Germany’s recorded music commerce group says it nonetheless sees potential upside forward, regardless of a slowdown within the progress fee of recorded music gross sales.
The German Music Business Affiliation (BVMI) says recorded music gross sales within the first half of 2025 hit EUR €1.157 billion (USD $1.36 billion on the common trade fee for Q2 2025),on a retail foundation. That’s up 1.4% from the identical interval a yr earlier.
On condition that Germany’s year-on-year inflation fee has been operating at round 2% in current months, this implies that, on an inflation-adjusted foundation, retail music gross sales shrank barely in H1.
The most recent numbers characterize a big slowdown from H1 2024, when recorded gross sales rose by 7.6% YoY.
The H1 2025 numbers have been considerably stronger for digital music gross sales particularly (streaming and a la carte downloads), which rose 3.9% YoY.
Nevertheless, that progress was partly offset by a 13.2% YoY decline in bodily gross sales (vinyl and CDs), with CD gross sales dropping 20.1% YoY.
The numbers replicate a basic malaise in Germany’s economic system, which has stagnated up to now a number of years primarily attributable to excessive vitality costs. Nevertheless, after near-zero progress in 2023 and 2024, there have been indicators of a pickup just lately. The nation’s actual (inflation-adjusted) GDP grew 0.3% in Q2 2025.
Dr. Florian Drücke, Chairman & CEO of BVMI, stays optimistic concerning the recorded music enterprise going ahead.
“As an business, we’re at the moment in an thrilling section in which there’s nonetheless potential for progress, even in developed markets equivalent to Germany,” he mentioned in an announcement on Thursday (July 24).
“On this surroundings characterised by enormous technological leaps, our business is especially reliant on European legislators maintaining a tally of the authorized framework for future digital enterprise areas. This at the moment contains the constant continuation of the trail taken with the AI Regulation to be able to allow the digital license enterprise.”
“We’re at the moment in an thrilling section in which there’s nonetheless potential for progress, even in developed markets equivalent to Germany.”
Dr. Florian Drücke, BVMI
Giant elements of the European Union’s AI Act will come into power in early August, and earlier this month the European Fee unveiled a voluntary Code of Apply for AI firms, designed to assist them keep away from regulatory burdens from the Act.
The Code’s ideas embrace pointers on how AI firms gather copyrighted content material on-line, requiring them to not circumvent restrictions positioned by rightsholders on web-scraping of knowledge. The Code additionally requires them to keep away from gathering materials from copyright-infringing sources equivalent to digital piracy web sites.
Most of the most distinguished AI firms, together with Anthropic, Microsoft and OpenAI, have dedicated to abiding by the Code, though Fb and Instagram proprietor Meta Platformshas mentioned it received’t signal on.
Some facets of the EU’s AI rules have confirmed controversial with rightsholders, for example the “opt-out” mechanism that requires copyright homeowners to explicitly state that they don’t need their content material for use to coach AI.
That regulation final yr prompted each Sony Music Group and Warner Music Group to ship out letters to AI builders informing them that they’re opting out of getting their supplies used to coach AI.
German performing rights assortment society GEMA has been on the forefront of music business our bodies calling for a licensing market that will allow artists and music firms to be paid for the usage of their music in coaching AI.
“We’re ready to barter honest phrases of use and remuneration fashions with the AI firms,” GEMA’s Christina von Gemmingen-Hornbergmentioned final yr.Music Enterprise Worldwide
