Marketing textbook, chapter 9

Digital music formats such as mp3 and streaming have changed the way music is used, so that the music industry has had to expand its distribution channels online in order to compensate for the decline in sales of traditional sound carriers.

The example of the music industry shows that the decision to expand differentiated multichannel distribution can also be necessitated by technological environmental conditions (see chapter 2.2). With the spread of the mp3 audio file format at the end of the 1990s, music consumption behaviour began to change. While music had previously been listened to primarily via physical media (e.g. music cassettes, CDs, records), the mp3 compression format made it possible to listen to and exchange high-quality music files that required little storage space without the need for traditional sound carriers. While the German music industry's turnover peaked at 2.3 billion euros in 1997 with CDs alone, CD sales declined steadily with the launch of illegal music sharing networks on the Internet and the increasing penetration of CD burners and Internet access in the early 2000s. Only reluctantly did the music industry attempt to compensate for the collapsing sales by cooperating with new online distribution channels (Musicload, iTunes Store since 2003/2004). Parallel to the legal fight against music piracy, a legal channel for purchasing digital music was also created. In 2024, sales of CDs in Germany totalled just 210 million euros, while sales in the digital business (downloads, streaming services such as Spotify) rose to over 1.8 billion euros, 93 percent of which was attributable to audio streaming thanks to broadband internet access (Drücke et al., 2025, p. 9; Tschmuck, 2021, p. 191 ff.). Technological developments therefore changed consumer behaviour and made digital distribution and thus further differentiation of multi-channel distribution necessary in order to generate more revenue (Arditi, 2020, p. 23).

Image description

This complex infographic shows the change in music formats over four decades. Presented as a stacked area diagram, it shows the sales development of the German music industry (1984-2024) and thus the visualisation of the transition from analogue formats such as vinyl and MC through the CD era to the dominance of streaming and digital media in 2024.

The chart illustrates the massive structural change in the industry with colour-coded areas for the various sound carrier formats:

Milestones on the timeline: Important events are embedded in the chart, such as the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989), the launch of Napster as a file-sharing platform (1999), the launch of iTunes (2004), the first iPhone generation (2007) and the launch of Spotify in Germany (2012). 2018 marks the year in which audio streaming became the top-selling format for the first time.

Key figures 2024:

• industry turnover: € 2.38 billion.

• Digital market share: 84,1 %.

Revenue streaming & digital other: 1.96 billion.

Historical phases and formats:

• Vinyl (dark blue/purple): Dominated the early 1980s (record in 1980: approx. € 760 million), has experienced a small renaissance since around 2010 after almost disappearing (narrowing purple stripe at the lower edge).

• MC - music cassette (light blue): Had its heyday around 1991 (€ 524.5 million) and disappeared almost completely after the turn of the millennium.

• CD (yellow): Forms the largest share of the chart. The CD era peaked in 1997 at € 2,308.5 million, before a drastic decline set in from around 2002.

• Single CD (green): Supplemented the market in the 1990s with a peak in 1999 (€ 317.8 million).

• Downloads & Mobile (red/dark red): Includes ringtones (peak 2006: € 41.4 million), music videos (peak 2004: € 167.0 million) and music downloads (peak 2013: € 257.7 million).

Streaming & Digital Miscellaneous (Pink): This area will grow massively from around 2012 and will account for the lion's share of total sales in 2024.

Sources:

• https://www.musikindustrie.de/wie-musik-zur-karriere-werden-kann/markt-bestseller/musikindustrie-in-zahlen-2024  (as at 12 January 2026).
• https://www.musikindustrie.de/fileadmin/bvmi/upload/06_Publikationen/MiZ_Jahrbuch/2024/MountMusic_2024.jpg
• Arditi, D.: iTake-Over. The Recording Industry in the Streaming Area, 2nd ed., Lanham/Maryland 2020.
• Drücke, F./Herrenbrück, S./Sobbe, G./Reitz, S./Budde, E.: Musikindustrie in Zahlen 2024, Bundesverband Musik-industrie e.V., Berlin 2025.
• Tschmuck, P.: The Economics of Music, 2nd edition, Agenda Publishing 2021.