Andrew Campbell from Gordeon comments German music sales

By Linus Lassus

Andrew Campbell is the founder of the German music promotion agency Gordeon Promotion and Steam Music Management & Publishing and has been in the business since the 90’s – when CD sales were high and life was easy (at least if you relied on selling CD’s). Today, the situation is different, according to Andrew.

“Germany is, compared to other international music markets, still very unique and different. While physical sales decrease in nearly every other country in the world, the situation in Germany remains steady. Physical sales stay high – the market share is more than 70% right now.”

This statement is also confirmed by the recent market report made by Bundesverband Musikindustrie, of which you can read more here. However, Andrew also sees another trend. According to him, it might be good to consider your style of music when deciding on the distribution format.

“It’s very interesting to see how the musical genres affect the digital sales in Germany. The consumers switch from physical formats to digital ones when buying music in the electronic music genres, like pop and hiphop. That definitely affects the physical sales. On the other hand, it is interesting to see that in the rock, indie, singer-songwriter and metal genres digital sales are still very low, almost insignificant. In those genres the consumer is still very much into buying physical products, either CD’s or vinyl. But the more electronical the music becomes, the more you can see the digital sales increasing, also in the German market.”