Central European Music Industry Report 2019

Daniel Antal, CFA

9/27/2019

Central and Eastern European Music Industry Report

  • Live Music
  • Recorded Music
  • Grants
  • Music Exports
  • Conclusions



    Press Arrows Left / Right for Main Topics

Live Music in CEE

  • Different purchasing power compared to West, South, North
  • Different concert demographics in the big regions of Europe
  • Very different concert markets and musician strategies are present in this vast geographical area


Press Arrows Up / Down for To Review Live Music

Purchasing Power for Events

Demography: Select countries for comparison

Demography: All Europe

Seasonality of Concert Demand

Musician’s Concert Opportunities

Key takeaways

  • Low density of purchasing power and time leads to huge festivals
  • Musicians are paid on many low paid gigs
  • This strategy does not work when labor costs increase and small venues die, as happened post-accession in the more mature CEE/EU markets

Recorded Music In The CEE

  • Lower purchasing power than in West and North
  • Less willingness to pay at all, private copying is more prevalent (in fact, we measured rising euro values)
  • Weaker streaming markets, reliance on public performance royalties and PCR (“blank media levies”)
  • Royalty gap - by all benchmarks, royalty levels are lower in the CEE than in the North and West
    Press Arrows Up / Down for To Review Live Music

Willingness & Ability To Purchase

Low Royalty Levels

Streaming Markets: What Market Players Know

  • The Global Market Report covers total market revenues and dollar/dollar growth rates at last years’ (!) exchange rates
  • European stakeholders are affected by exchange rate changes
  • Subscription fee in the countries where they sell, mainly the domestic country; subscriber numbers in the countries where they sell, mainly again the domestic country
  • Repertoire competition in the countries where they sell, because that determines the monthly stream price in the local currency.
  • So how these are affecting an Austrian, Albanian, Czech or Slovenian producer, performer or composer?

Streaming Markets: CEEMID Indices

Grants

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Availability & Suitability of Grants

Music Exports in CEE

  • Most music export in live and in streaming is to neighbors
  • Music with serious royalty potential only from UK, FR, DE, SE, NL
  • The domestic market share is seriously declining.

Press Arrows Up / Down for To Review Live Music

Market share on Spotify Top 50 In Summer 2019

European Export Origins To European Charts

Conclusions

  • What musicians do? How can you help them, and how can they help each other?
  • How musicians earn their living? How could earnings be more stable and catch up with the EU average?
  • How much they are earning? What is their position compared to other professions?
  • How satisfied are they with their lives? What would improve their professional satisfaction levels?

How Musicians Earn Their Living?

Complex Careers: Artist, Technical & Managerial Roles

How Much Musicians Earn?

Life Satisfaction Levels

Discussion Points

- Working with data-driven companies like Alphabet/Google/YouTube, Apple/iTunes/Apple Music, Spotify or Deezer?

- Competing in the algorithm-based global marketplace, training algorithms for sales, exports, quotas: how is music sold in 2019 and how can you compete from the CEE?

- Closing the royalty gap on the level of collective management, labels, publishers and individuals. How can the CEE at least catch up to the level of average wage convergence to the EU average?

- Live music’s value and the small venues’ problem: how can they invest into 21th century and remain viable with high labour costs?

- Economic policies, taxation and grants for the popular music sector: takeaways for better advocacy.

The Author

Thanks to Experts and Innovators in Digital Music

Consolidated Independent supported the making of this report. CI is the market leader in managed services for the digital music industry, connecting the best independent music with the opportunities of the global market.

Special thanks to the data science team: Theo Gardner, Andy McFarland & Jerome Wynne for data preparation and advice.

Feedback & Questions: danielantal.eu

Contact: danielantal.eu - linkedin - github - dataverse

Topics: royalty valuation - private copying - grant design - policy advocacy - ceemid observatory