France’s Recorded Music Industry Topped $1BN in 2021
April 14, 2022
Recorded music revenues in France, the world’s fifth largest music market, topped $1 billion (€861 million) in 2021, representing 14.3% year-on-Year growth and marking the fifth consecutive annual increase for the market.
According to results published (March 15) by French trade body SNEP, which include total revenues for physical and digital sales, plus streaming, neighboring rights and sync.
France’s double digit growth in 2021 eclipsed the 0.1% increase seen by the market in 2020 (the pandemic year), when the market generated €781 million ($891m).
Streaming made up 97% of total digital revenues in 2021, generating €492 million ($581.5m), up 15.2% versus 2020, when France generated €426 million ($485.7m) from streaming.
Paid subscription audio streaming revenues reached €378 million ($446.8m) in 2021, up 15% from €329 million ($375.14m) in 2020.
SNEP also reports that the total volume of streams in France in 2021 reached 93.5 billion, up from 85 billion in 2020.
Meanwhile, there were 22 million audio streaming users in France in 2021, according to SNEP.
Breaking that figure down, SNEP reveals that there were 7.8 million ad-supported account users in the market, and 10 million paid subscriptions (with 14.2 million premium account users when additionally taking into account family plan and individual premium users).
Taking a closer look at France’s 2021 recorded music revenue results shows that the market’s overall physical sales reached €223 million ($263.5m) last year, up 21%, or €39 million ($46m) compared to 2020 (see below).
CD sales contributed €139 million ($164.3m) to that total physical music tally, up 9.6% YoY.
Vinyl sales, meanwhile, grew 54.4% to reach €78.9 million ($93.2m) in 2021, compared to €51.1 million ($58.2m) the prior year.
Vinyl sales made up 35% of all physical sales in France in 2021, with 5.2 million records sold last year, versus 4.5 million 2020.
SNEP reports that the sales volume and revenues generated by the vinyl format have tripled in the past five years. In 2016, 1.8m vinyl LPs were sold in the market, generating €22.8 million ($24.2m).
SNEP has also published some stats on where fans were buying physical music in 2021, with €63 million ($74.4m) generated from e-commerce alone.
Of that €63 million, €57 million ($67.3m) came from online retailers, while €6 million ($7m) was turnover from artists’ websites.
The continued rise in screaming has left Artists losing out on millions of unclaimed royalties due to errors in metadata . Music matching technology can help music rights organisations address this issue and ensure accuracy.
There is a huge discrepancy between the music being played and the royalties being paid. Much of this can be attributed to bad, unorganised and inconsistent music metadata.
The Matching Engine uses automated parameters to identify and match data. A foundation of Azure and Databricks technology provides the ability to process and transform data from various streaming platforms and in different formats at scale.
