BERLIN, March 7 (Xinhua) -- Audio streaming has overtaken CDs in terms of revenues of the German music industry for the first time in 2018, the German association of music industry (BVMI) announced on Thursday.

With a slight decrease in sales to 1.58 billion euros (1.78 billion U.S. dollars), revenues of the German music industry remained stable, "due to the ongoing substantial growth in audio streaming", BVMI chairman Florian Druecke commented on the sales figures of 2018.

Audio streaming in Germany continued to grow significantly by 33.5 percent, with streaming sales rising to 734 million euros, marking the most important source of income for the German music industry. Streaming thus achieved a market share of 46.4 percent, according BVMI.

Druecke concluded that "this is a very good sign for the coming years, because it is also an indicator of users' increasing willingness to pay".

CD sales, on the other hand, declined by 20 percent to 579 million euros in 2018, reaching a market share of 36.4 percent. However, CDs remained the second largest source of revenues for the German music industry.

"After four years of growth, the sector's sales are now on a plateau for the second year in a row, which is not bad news", Druecke added.

The business of the German music industry continued to shift significantly into the digital domain in 2018. More than half of revenues were achieved with audio and video streams as well as digital downloads, while 43.3 percent were generated by physical media such as CDs or vinyl records.

With regards to the current discussion about licensing fees for music on video services, the German music association pointed to recent studies that showed that fans spend about as much time listening to music on audio streaming as on video streaming services. Druecke stressed that this consumer behavior "is in no way reflected by actual sales figures." Enditem

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