Ladies and gentlemen, we have lift off in France for recorded-music revenues. The market grew by just 1.4% in 2018 according to the IFPI, but figures published yesterday by industry body SNEP reveal that the first half of 2019 has been much better.
Overall recorded-music revenues grew by 12.7% year-on-year in France in the first six months of 2019 to €277.2m. And yes, streaming is playing its part: streaming revenues grew by 28.3% year-on-year to €175.3m (so more than 63% of the market). That said, this is also a story about the decline in physical revenues slowing down: physical sales were down 15% in 2018, but only by 4.3% in the first half of 2019.
And the top album in France in 2019 so far? That would be ‘Deux Frères’ by PNL, the duo who recently signed a wide-ranging partnership with Apple Music…
SNEP’s director general Alexandre Lasch struck a careful note with his statement on the figures, meanwhile. “Audio streaming subscriptions are now the major source of value creation in our market. However, France still has less than 6 million subscribers and the room for improvement remains considerable to transform this early growth found in a sustainable model.”
