CD-Markets size

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(Data in tables from 1996 and just an (highly educated) estimate, because the data do not include self-produced and distributed albums by musicians, miniature labels or illegal CDs. We use 1996 data because they are the most complete.)

In the meantime there are some reliable 1998 data for music-CD sales at retail prices:

• USA: 13,193 Mio. US-$
• Japan: 6,521 Mio US-$
• UK: 2,855 Mio US-$
• Germany: 2,832 Mio US-$
• France: 2,134 Mio US-$
• Brazil: 1,055 Mio US-$

These figures are using the US-spelling of numbers - meaning the US-figure is 13 Billion US-$.

The strong growth in the UK against Germany seems to imply two interesting interpretations:

• the CD-price (over 20% higher in the UK then in Germany) is not a critical factor for music that people actually are highly interested in
• CD-recordables (more widespread in Germany and France then in the UK) can have a seriuosly detrimental effect on music sales

(sponsored by the AMM Music Group )

Country	CD-sales in Millions	Population in Millions	Yearly sales of CDs per inhabitant	Remarks
USA	780	260	3	music sales 12 billion $
Japan	283	125	2.3	music sales 7.5 billion $
Germany	166	82	2	many mid-price etc
United Kingdom	160	56	2.6
France	98	56	1.8
Brazil	89	160	0.5	1995, probably more by now, growth is over 50 % per year
Canada	42	29	1.7
BeNeLux	52	25	2	Belgium and Holland are usually seen together as one territory
Australia	35	18	2
Spain	35	38	0.9	still a lot of MCs
Mexico	31	90	0.3	1996
Italy	28	57	0.5	still a lot of MCs
South Korea	22	44	0.5	plus 35 mio MCs

The figures in this are the actual CD sales in these countries - and do not by themself show how much money is actually made by the musicians and other copyright holders. US-recorded albums (usually with american artists) are estimated as having a market share of about 30 % in most countries outside of the USA in 1996 - which can be interpreted as about US-$ 4 billion per year in export income for US-artists, composers, publishers and record labels.

Since there is no common european language and usually no common marketing strategy for Europe (in contrast to the USA there are no important common media available in the whole region) - it does not make much sense to count the european music market as a whole. Overall Europe has about 600 million inhabitants and CD-sales of about 670 million units. The music sales (calculated as above without income from radio airplay, TV and film synchronisation rights) are about 14 billion US-$ while the overall income from music is about 21 billion US-$.

The yearly sales per inhabitant is just a statistical figure to give an easy and fast reference point. The reality differs a lot though. In Germany for example almost 40 percent of the populations do not buy CDs at all. Most real music customers buy between 3 and 15 CDs per year. Things are also complicated by specific buying habits or concepts. A lot of the albums sold in Germany are compilations - which are mainly christmas gifts and are often very cheaply priced. In contrast to most musicians expectations, compilations rarely serve to make musicians more known and therefore do not lead to additional sales and income for the musicians.

The sales per inhabitant give an indication that the number of CDs sold does not significantly rise with the price of CDs being lowered. This can be deducted from the sales in 4 countries:

While CD-prices differ widely in comparison - at 1996 exchange rates, a normal CD cost

• below US-$ 16.00 in the USA
• US-$ 14.00 in Canada
• US-$ 25.00 in Japan
• US-$ 21.00 to US-$ 23.00 in Germany
• US-$ 25.00 to US-$ 27.00 in the UK

all these countries have similar sales per inhabitant. If there was a huge influence of the price, then the US-sales and especially the canadian sales should have been significantly higher. Italy, which had quite low prices at that time, also should have had higher sales per inhabitant (but the italian situatiion could possibly be explained by higher piracy and a slightly weaker income of the population at that time.

Another aspect to watch is that there are quite a few illegal copies being sold:

It is estimated that the record companies, musicians, composers and publishers in Europe were being robbed by at least US-$ 100 Million per year by Bulgarian pirates and counterfeits alone (at low wholesale prices - the estimate is about 15 million CDs per year going via Russia to Europe in around 1995 and 1996 - which is slightly reduced by now. The musicians and composers share of this is about half - so basically some usually not exactly rich european creative people are being robbed of about US-$ 50 million per year. There is additional piracy not only in the often critized countries in Asia, but also in southern Europe - and some german "businessmen" have already been caught dealing in fake CDs or other illegal copies.

If we consider that on average people listen to music at least for 2 to 5 hours per day (via radio, TV, playing games, seeing live concerts, background music in bars, pubs, restaurants or even while shopping), the money spent for this entertainment is extremely low, even though overall the music business is quite a big entertainment field.

• social interpretation of these and other economic data
• Overview of publicly traded music companies
• MEBIS Homepage

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Last Updated: 1. May 1999