The Spanish market has been one of the hardest hit since the birth of online piracy, with annual recorded music revenues dropping by a shocking 80% since 2001.
In real monetary terms, that decline has been even more devastating: annual revenues during the low point of 2013 amounted to a crazy €502m (half a billion Euros) less than those seen in 2001.
That’s equivalent to a 27th of the entire annual global worth of recorded music today.
In 2014, though, the country started to show signs of a recovery – or, at least, a return to growth – up 21.2% to €150m.
And that upwards trajectory, driven by streaming, is continuing in 2015.
According to new data from Spanish trade body Promusicae, Spaniards spent a total of 70.6 million euros on recorded music in the first half of 2015 – a 10.9% year-on-year increase over the same period in 2014.
Overall, that income is roughly equal to that seen in H1 2011.
The rise is almost entirely due to streaming income, with revenues jumping up 39.8% to €30.64m.
Streaming represented 43% of Spain’s total recorded music market in Jan-June, and 80% of the digital market.
Promusicae does not break down that streaming figure into ad-funded and subscription revenues; Spain is a market where ‘freemium’ music is notoriously dominant.
Plus, this streaming number includes cash from the likes of YouTube and Vevo, as well as Spotify, Deezer, and Napster.
For the first time in Spain, digital sales topped physical: income from downloads and streams accounted for 53.9% of the market.
Physical formats such as CD and vinyl represented the remaining 46.1%.
This physical number also includes video sales, which actually increased in the six months, up 24.2% to 956,000 Euros.
Overall, though, sales of physical music (excluding video) dropped 4.9% from 33.2m to 31.6m euros.
As a result, revenues from streaming almost equalled those coming from sales of CD and vinyl.
Downloads decreased 3.7% in H1 2015 from 7m to 6.8 million euros in value.
And mobile products (ring tones, ringback tones) fell 9% to only account for 670,000 euros.
[Pictured: Enrique Iglesias, who featured on El Perdon with Nicky Jam – a No.1 single in Spain for 17 weeks this year] Music Business Worldwide
