Recorded music revenues in Germany rose just 2.3% year-over-year to EUR €2.42 billion in 2025.
That’s according to the new annual results for the market published on Thursday (February 26) by the German Music Industry Association, BVMI.
BVMI reports retail stats in Germany – i.e. the amount of money handed over by consumers at the tills, on online stores, and via their streaming subscriptions.
The 2.3% YoY annual recorded music revenue growth stat posted by BVMI for 2025 marks a significant slowdown compared to the 7.2% YoY growth reported by BVMI for 2024.
The headline revenue figure of €2.42 billion for the world’s fourth-largest music market converts to USD $2.73 billion at the average annual exchange rate published by the IRS.
Music streaming was the market’s primary growth driver in 2025, with streaming revenues growing 4.1% YoY to €2 billion ($2.26 billion).
Streaming alone accounted for 84.4% of total recorded music revenues in Germany.
Digital revenues (which include both streaming and downloads) grew 3.8% YoY to €2.078 billion ($2.35 billion), accounting for 85.8% of the total market.
Physical revenues in Germany declined 5.9% YoY overall to €345 million ($389 million), accounting for 14.2% of total recorded music revenue.
Revenues generated by physical formats in the market have fallen by more than two-thirds since 2015, when they generated €1.06 billion.
Revenues generated by CDs in Germany fell 11.3% YoYto approximately €175 million in 2025, accounting for 7.2% of total market revenue.
CDs remain the largest physical format in the market, but vinyl is closing the gap — vinyl’s share of physical revenues in the market rose to 44.2% in 2025, up from 40.5% in 2024.
Vinyl revenues grew 2.8% YoYand accounted for 6.3% of total recorded music revenue.
Digging deeper into BVMI’s new stats reveals that Germany’s revenues generated by sync licensing in 2025 grew7.2% YoY to €12 million ($13.5 million).
Neighboring rights revenues, as tracked by German industry body GVL, are estimated to have declined5.1% to €245 million ($276.6 million). Final numbers for neighboring rights in 2025 aren’t in yet.
“The music market continues to develop and change rapidly.”
Dr. Florian Drücke
Commenting on the latest results, Dr. Florian Drücke, Chairman & CEO of BVMI, said: “The music market continues to develop and change rapidly, the dynamics of our industry in the area of innovative partnerships are high, and sales growth in Germany is solid in a highly competitive environment.”
Drücke also commented on what he called the “increasing penetration of AI in all industry segments”, explaining that BVMI is “particularly interested in expanding the digital licensing business based on strong copyright laws that must not be watered down”.
Drücke added: “In the current environment, it is important that we work together even more intensively to explain the profound changes in the music business,” and warned that due to the arrival of “more and more AI-generated content,” the “competition for attention is constantly increasing.”
Germany’s 2.3% recorded music market growth only marginally outpaced the country’s annual average inflation rate of 2.2% in 2025, according to the German Federal Statistical Office.
It also came against the backdrop of an economy that barely grew last year: Germany’s GDP rose just 0.2% in 2025, its first year of growth after two consecutive years of recession.
Germany’s streaming growth slowdown mirrors a trend playing out across Europe’s biggest markets.
In the UK, the world’s third-largest music market, total recorded music revenues grew 4.2% YoYin 2025 to GBP £2.45 billion (USD $3.23 billion), according to the Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA) — though streaming subscription revenues grew just 3.2%, a rate that merely matched UK inflation.
One notable divergence: UK physical music revenues surged 11.5% YoY to £368.1 million in 2025, driven by an 18.5% jump in vinyl revenue, while Germany’s physical market declined5.9%.
Both markets’ physical segments account for a similar percentage of total revenues — 15% in the UK, 14.2% in Germany — but the UK’s vinyl boom is not being replicated across the channel in the world’s next-largest recorded music market.
All EUR to USD conversions in this story have been made at the average annual exchange rate for 2025 published by the IRS.
