[letmein]

Germany has overtaken the UK to become the third largest music market in the world.

Although the UK has seen a growth of 19.6% in digital sales, the overall music market has shrunk by 11%, resulting in the country's slip to fourth place after generating £797 million ($1.38 billion) in revenue.

The US is still the largest market at £2.55bn ($4.17bn), followed by Japan at £2.42bn ($3.96bn) and Germany in third position with £865m ($1.41bn).

Music Week reports that the IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry) has revealed that the worldwide music market's value fell by more than 8% last year, despite an overall rise in digital sales of 5.4%.

IFPI's report also noted that income generated from performance rights grew by 4.6% in 2010, with the US (up 27.9%) and Germany (up 18.5%) making the biggest gains.

France's new Hadopi law, which subsidises legal mp3 payments for teens to encourage them to purchase digital music instead of downloading for free, has seen the country's P2P file sharing fall by 5.1%.

It was reported last month that the amount of music royalties paid out to artists fell for the first time.

Mercury Records recently announced that they are to terminate the production of physical singles after reporting that 99% of their sales are purchased digitally.

[Smithy]

Illegal Downloading ftw

[BB_Eye]

Germany and Britain have equally horrible taste in music on the whole (despite plenty of great music being created by both countries) so it doesn't mean too much.

Source

[Iceman]

Originally Posted by BB_Eye

Germany and Britain have equally horrible taste in music on the whole (despite plenty of great music being created by both countries) so it doesn't mean too much.

Source

Elaborate Please

[Iceman]

Originally Posted by Smithy

Illegal Downloading ftw

i cant even do that right, i DL'd that prodigy album but I only wanted some songs and they wont scrobble for me

[Shaun]

well they have a bigger population and economy so it's hardly surprising

[BB_Eye]

Originally Posted by Iceman

Elaborate Please

Abba and Madonna both sold over double the amount of records the Beatles did in the UK and they are not even British (let alone good). Celine Dion also sold more. Queen sold over double the amount of records (almost four times as many as the Rolling Stones). The Germans have equally naff tastes if you look at the figures.

You can argue population growth as a factor, but then why did the Beatles sell a whopping 207 million records (more than one record per person at the time) in the States but only £7.2 million in the UK? Incidentally, the Beatles sold almost twice as many records in the sparsely populated Canada as they did in the UK.

Another reason for my opinion is the ability of unqualified pieces of shit like Bryan Adams' "Everything I Do", Robson and Jerome's "Unchained Melody" and Adele's "Someone Like You" to stay at number 1 for weeks and weeks... and weeks... and weeks and the disproportionate success of Michael Buble in the UK compared to North America

Oh, and the success of the notorious schlagermusik style in Germany.

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