The Italian music market grew by 14.2% in the first six months of 2023, reaching a total turnover of approximately 176 million euros. The new semi-annual report of the Federation of the Italian Music Industry (FIMI) says so on the revenues from recorded music in Italy, an overview that highlights the dominant role of the digital segment, which has reached 139 million euros in turnover thanks to an overall growth of 16 %. And it’s the physical sector is also healthy which overall, adding vinyl and CD, earned 9.4% more than in the same period of 2022.
Driving the growth of the digital segment, which in Italy represents 84% of the total as in the United States, is subscription streaming music which, thanks to a turnover of almost 91 million euros, records a +18.2% compared to the same period of the previous year. And the segment of free streaming music is also growing, which thanks to advertising revenues exceeded 28.5 million euros, with a 22.9% increase compared to the 23 million euros collected in the first half of 2022.
Slight decrease, however, for the music video revenue which lose 0.5%, while the market share of songs downloaded and played on one’s own devices remains stable at 2%, despite a 16.7% growth compared to the same period last year. Overall, the streaming market for recorded music in Italy grew by 16%
As for the physical market, the overall market share fell by 1% compared to the first half of 2022. But even though it slipped from 17% to 16%, it is still in good health. As anticipated, in fact, collections grew by 9.4%, reaching almost 28 million euros in total turnover, and this thanks to the 14.3% increase in vinyl sales and thanks to the increase of 5, 3% in CD sales.
In all of this, the FIMI report invites us to consider the positive impact on the Italian music sector of the Culture Bonus 18app, which at the end of June generated over 8 million euros, and celebrates the presence of only Italian artists in the top ten charts relating to the Singles and Albums categories.