Enlarge image 'The Count' in performance with his band Unheilig in Berlin on September 1, 2012. (© picture alliance / dpa) Despite the success of bands like Unheilig, Die Toten Hosen and Linkin Park: the music industry in Germany reached a low point this year, according to the market research company GfK, but there will be a slight rise in sales as of 2013. The level reached at the turn of the millennium, with figures over two billion euros, will remain unattainable. The German Music Industry Association (BVMI) referred to this trend on Wednesday in a discussion with the news agency dapd at the start of Berlin Music Week. 

“The outlook leads us to be cautiously optimistic,” says BVMI Managing Director Florian Drücke. According to the prediction, in this year the sales in the industry will decline to 1.406 billion euros, slightly below the preceding year’s figures. By 2016 the proceeds are supposed to rise slightly to 1.487 billion euros. 

The sales of classic recordings like CDs will shrink according to predictions, but in 2016 will still account for more than half of sales figures. Downloads will make up a good third, while subscription models – such as Napster or Spotify – while take in eight times as much by then as they do nowadays, but overall will remain at around 10 percent of total revenue. 

In the first half of the year, according to BVMI, the revenues of subscription-based and commercial financed music-streaming, continued to rise in comparison to the same period the previous year, by 41.6 percent to around 18 million euros. However, collectively, that amounted to only around three percent of the total sales generated.