Taxi Driver by Rkomi was Italy's best-selling album in H1 2022
MBW has previously written about the extraordinary dominance of Italy’s homegrown artists in the market.
In the first half of 2021 for example, the full Top 13 of Italy’s domestic album chart and the entire Top 10 of the country’s singles chart for H1 2021 was made up of Italian and Italian language acts, according to FIMI/GFK data.
Now, new stats released by FIMI highlight this trend even further: Every album in the Top 20 of the country’s domestic album chart for the full year of 2021 was from a local artist.
Additionally, “for the first time ever”, according to FIMI, the full Top 10 of its Singles Chart for the year was also comprised entirely of Italian acts.
According to the charts published by FIMI, Taxi Driver by Rkomi was the No.1 album in 2021.
Sangiovanni by Sangiovanni came in at No.2 on the 2021 album chart, while Eurovision winners Maneskin’s Teatro d’ira – Vol. I was No.3.
The No.1 single was Malibu by Sangiovanni.
FIMI also reports that the streaming volume (including free and premium) in the market grew by 42% in 2021, to 53 billion streams (see below).
In 2021, 479 albums from 302 artists exceeded the threshold of 10 million streams, according to FIMI.
FIMI CEO Enzo Mazza tells MBW that in 2021, “premium streaming bypassed the free tier [streams] thanks to the increase of new [subscriptions]”.
He added that in 2021, of the 53 billions overall streams, over 28 billions were streams from premium subscribers.
“For the first time, we saw a billion stream[s] per week,” he added. “Italy is still in a growth trend and we expect [a] further increase in 2022.”
Elsewhere, in the physical market, following what FIMI says was “the standstill during lockdown”, sales of physical music, including vinyl and CDs grew 18% compared to 2020, driven primarily by vinyl sales, which grew by 44.2%.
Cassette sales also grew in 2021, seeing a 41% increase in sales.
“We have witnessed Italian music assert itself within the international arena despite the complicated year, and the ongoing generational artistic transformation in our country.”
Enzo Mazza, FIMI
Added Enzo Mazza, CEO of FIMI: “We have witnessed Italian music assert itself within the international arena despite the complicated year, and the ongoing generational artistic transformation in our country.
“This year’s results reveal the important work of record labels behind the scenes, who put the ever-changing technologies of the new streaming era fully at the service of music.”Music Business Worldwide
