The UK’s Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA) has slammed international recorded music trade body the IFPI for excluding physical formats from its Music Consumer Insight Report.
The IFPI, which counts 1,300 major and independent companies in 59 countries among its membership, published its report last week and mostly highlighted on-demand streaming consumption.
“By highlighting streaming to the exclusion of everything else, the IFPI effectively disenfranchises not just the people in the UK, but also in Japan and Germany and South Korea who continue to buy physical music,” writes ERA CEO Kim Bayley (pictured) in an open letter to IFPI CEO Frances Moore.
In the letter Bayley urges the IFPI to abandon its “blinkered view of the world” and instead adopt the more supportive approach taken by the major record company members of the IFPI and the UK’s BPI trade association which this weekend, together with ERA, launches a new National Album Day promotion devoted to celebrating albums regardless of format”.
“No one is more enthusiastic about the rise of streaming than ERA,” adds Bayley.
“Indeed it is our members including Spotify, Amazon, Deezer and Google who are substantially responsible for the recent upturn in the recorded music industry’s fortunes.
“No one is more enthusiastic about the rise of streaming than ERA.”
Kim Bayley
“However, all of our members are agreed – as outlined in our recent manifesto, Delivering The Future Of Entertainment[1] – that the key to a healthy music eco-system is a diverse channel landscape, embracing physical as well as digital formats.”
According to the IFPI’s Music Consumer Insight Report 2018, consumers are listening to 17.8 hours of music per week, with 57% of 16-24 year olds using a paid audio streaming service.
The report also states that more than one third of the world is still pirating music.Music Business Worldwide
