The recorded music business in France enjoyed a banner year in 2013, with CD sales and digital income both growing – helping overall annual market revenues climb by 2.3%.
The French market generated 603.2 million Euros in the year, a significant increase on 2012’s tally of 589.7m Euros, according to French trade body SNEP.
It was an important positive step for France after being hit by a painful digital era: in six years, the French market has lost nearly a third of its value, down from 2007’s 713m Euros haul.
Physical sales accounted for 61% of market value. Digital music (streaming, downloads and ringtones) lay claim to 21%.
SNEP’s year-end figures also take into account neighbouring rights income, which represented 18% of total revenues.
The value of the French digital music market in 2013 grew very slightly by 0.6% to 125.8m Euros from 125.0m in 2013, claiming 26% of total market revenues.
The value of digital downloads dropped by 1% to 62.7m Euros, enough to claim 50% of the digital market for the second year in a row.
Streaming grew by 4% to 54.1 Euros, claiming 43% of overall digital revenues. The remaining 7% of the digital market was taken up by ringtones.
Streaming services have now attracted 2 million premium subscribers and 6 million users in France. Subscribers generated 35.8m Euros in 2013, up 1.2%, while ad-supported free services generated 18.2m Euros, up 9.6%.
Fascinatingly, sales of physical products went up (+ 1%) to 367.4m Euros – the first increase in the market since 2002. Physical album sales increased by 1.6% to generate 346.2 million Euros in the year.
[Read SNEP’s full report on the French recorded music business in 2013 through here.]
70% of sales across all formats were by French-speaking artists – the highest proportion for 10 years.
The albums market fell 6.2% by unit sales to 48.5m. 7.3m were sold digitally, representing a 3.9% fall year-on-year.
The singles market fell 8.7%, down to 40.7m sales.
Stromae’s second album, Racine carrée, sold over a million units, clocking up 1,159,320 sales. 87.2% of sales were physical. The LP was the first million-seller since 2004’s soundtrack to the movie Les Choristes.
France’s second best-selling album of 2013, Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories sold half the figure. The duo’s Get Lucky, featuring Pharrell Williams, was the biggest-selling single of the year.
Music Business Worldwide
