Figures just released by the International Federation Of The Phonographic Industry (IFPI) show a global sales revenue increase of a modest 5.9 per cent in 2016, boosted by a 60.4 per cent rise in digital streaming revenue.

In the same financial year the rate of Australia’s consumption of recorded music slowed but did show an increase of 5.8 per cent for the year returning revenue of A$473.99 million.

In the 2015 financial year Australia was ranked the sixth largest global music market, but a slower growth rate in 2016 saw its position taken by Canada a market ranked seventh globally the year before.

The Top 7 world’s largest music markets in 2016 were:

1. USA
2. Japan
3. UK
4. Germany
5. France
6. Canada
7. Australia

Overall recorded music sales were up by 5.9 per cent boosted by 17.7 per cent increase in digital music sales.

Interestingly, music downloads plummeted by 20.5 per cent in the same period along with a 7.6 per cent decline in sales of physical formats.

The good news for the industry is the massive surge in streaming revenue that accounted for a rise of 60.4 per cent and compensating for the dip in downloads and sales of physical formats.

The report also honed in on the artists’ share of music streaming revenue and suggested more money should go the artists. A concern that could see streaming users pay more for their music sooner rather than later.

Sustainable growth can only be achieved by narrowing or closing the gap between the disparity in the benefits streaming delivers to users compared to artists, the report said.

YouTube was unfavourably compared with other music streaming providers including Spotify. YouTube according to the report pays $1 to record companies per user. In comparison Spotify hands over $20.

Streaming grew strongest in emerging markets. China’s uptake grew by 20.3 per cent, India was up by 26.2 per cent and Mexico surged by 23.6 per cent.

Record companies have been quick to value add to their streaming models investing heavily in artists and digital platforms and collectively the record labels now license more than 40 million tracks delivered by hundreds of providers.

Pirating is still seen as enemy number one by the IFPI and its report highlighted 19.2 million URLs that hosted infringing content in 2016.

The industry responded by giving Google 339 million requests to delist infringing sites in 2016.

After declining recorded music revenue in Asia and Australasia, the region climbed back up the bell curve in 2015/16 and recorded a growth rate of 5.1 per cent last year.

Streaming was the hero platform and this delivered an income increase in the order of 45.6 per cent broadly in line with global rates of growth. But in the same period digital downloads fell by 9.4 per cent and physical formats by a modest 1.8 per cent.

For more information visit IFPI.