14 Music Week 03.08.12
BUSINESSANALYSIS EUROPE EDITORIAL
Digital gets teeth in Europe as continent sees sales spikes
THE UK REMAINED BY FAR EUROPE’S LEADING DIGITAL SINGLES MARKET in the first half of 2012, but we are now starting to see some decent sales spikes on the continent. This is particularly true in Germany, which on IFPI numbers outscored the UK for all recorded music sales for the second successive year in 2011 thanks to its more robust physical market. However, on digital it continued to lag significantly behind
with 14.4 million downloaded albums sold last year, compared to 26.6 million in the UK, while its one-track downloads market was little more than 40% of the UK’s size. Another easy digital singles victory came the UK’s way again during 2012’s opening six months, but there was equally evidence of Germany getting its act together with its own sales growing four times as fast, according to Nielsen Music research. That still left the UK more than twice as big, but the signs are Germany is finally starting to post the kind of digital numbers that adequately reflect its position as Europe’s leading music market.
“Germany’s sales figures still left the UK more than twice as big, but the signs are Germany is finally starting to post the kind of digital numbers that adequately reflect its position as Europe’s leading music market”
The rest of Europe remains digitally even further behind the UK, but at least Nielsen is reporting some big percentage lifts in other markets, too, albeit from extremely small sales basis. Italy’s digital singles market grew by a third year-on-year up to the end of June and expansion in that
perennial piracy blackspot of Spain was even bigger, although this still only took sales up to 4.1 million units, a figure matched in the UK by just the combined tallies of the period’s top five sellers.
By contrast, Nielsen figures for France – Europe’s third biggest music territory – suggest the one-track digital market there increased by only 3.0% over the six months to 19.6 million units, little more than half of what was sold in Germany. And in a few places like Belgium the figures actually went down, confirming that while the one-track digital markets in the UK and US have long produced high-volume sales, in many other places things have hardly got started. It is not just on the digital stats where there are notable
differences occurring between the UK and mainland Europe, but on repertoire, too, with the continent’s top sellers far more geographically diverse than in Britain. This is most clearly highlighted in France where the half-year’s Top 10 sellers all came from different nationalities, while the deeper cosmopolitan mix is evident in other markets, too. This has resulted in far less domination by US acts among the top sellers in individual territories compared to even just a year ago, but it remains the case the hits that do cross borders are mainly those from the States.
Paul Williams, Head of Business Analysis Do you have views on this column? Feel free to comment by emailing
paul.williams@intentmedia.co.uk
www.musicweek.com
EUROPE BEHOLDS DIGITAL GROWTH
Euro winners: Michael Telo, Carly Rae Jespen and David Guetta
INTERNATIONAL BY PAUL WILLIAMS
E
uropean one-track download sales nudged towards 200 million units in the first half of 2012 as the market grew by 13.6% year-
on-year. The annual expansion was even bigger in
Germany – Europe’s leading digital music market outside the UK – where sales expanded by 32.2% to 36.0 million units, while there were also double- digit rises in Italy, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Spain, according to Nielsen Music statistics. These increases contrasted to the Official Charts Company reporting a 6.3% lift in UK singles sales up to the end of June, while Nielsen SoundScan stats for the States show the market rose there by 5.6%. An extra 23.1 million one-track downloads were
sold across Europe over the six months compared to the same period the year before and if this trend continues throughout the rest of 2012 Europe’s digital singles market will by around 400 million units by the end of the year. Jean Littolff, managing director for Nielsen Music in Europe, says the rise during the first half of 2012 built on the increase communicated by
ONE-TRACK DIGITAL SALES MID-YEAR 2012 PAN-EUROPEAN 2012 2011
% change BELGIUM 2012 2011
% change
DENMARK 2012 2011
% change FRANCE 2012 2011
% change
GERMANY 2012 2011
% change
193.0 million 169.9 million +13.6%
4.6 million 4.4 million –5.1%
4.6 million 4.5 million +2.5%
19.6 million 19.0 million +3.0%
36.0 million 27.2 million +32.2%
ITALY 2012 2011
% change
NETHERLANDS 2012 2011
% change NORWAY 2011 2010
% change SPAIN 2011 2010
% change
Nielsen in the 2011 round-up in Music Week. “Digital song sales are up 14% on the first half of
last year, with a significant sales increase in Germany, and valuable double-digit sales increases in Spain, Switzerland and the Netherlands, all going to prove that in the world where there are a plethora of music consumption options, the á-la- carte digital model continues to appeal to the European music consumer to complement these other consumption options,” he adds. Although the UK remains by some distance the
number one digital player in the region, its share of overall sales is continually going down. It made up 46.7% of Europe’s one-track download market between January and June 2011, but this dropped to 44.3% in the same period 12 months later as second-placed Germany’s share rose from 16.0% to 18.6%. Five tracks sold more than 300,000 units in
Germany during 2012’s opening half, led by Brazilian artist Michel Telo whose Universal- handled Ai Se Eu Te Pego sold 561,000 units, 57.0% more than closest challenger Heart Skips A Beat by Sony act Olly Murs featuring Rizzle Kicks. The Universal-issued Somebody That I Used by Gotye featuring Kimbra was its third top seller and the top seller
9.5 million 7.1 million +33.5%
4.2 million 3.4 million +22.3%
3.9 million 3.8 million +4.1%
4.1 million 3.0 million +37.5%
SWITZERLAND 2011 2010
% change
9.6 million 7.7 million +24.7%
Gotye
PAN-EUROPEAN POS ARTIST/ ALBUM / LABEL
1 GOTYE FEAT. KIMBRA Somebody That I Used To Know Universal
2 MICHEL TELO Ai Se Eu Te Pego Various 3 CARLY RAE JEPSEN
Call Me Maybe Universal 4 DAVID GUETTA FEAT. SIA Titanium EMI
5 FUN. FEAT. JANELLE MONAE We are Young Warner
6 NICKI MINAJ Starships Universal
7 FLO RIDA FEAT. SIA Wild Ones Warner
8 SEAN PAUL She Doesn’t Mind Warner 9 JESSIE J Domino Universal 10 ALEX CLARE Too Close Universal
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