Fact Sheet - Statistics On Internet Piracy Germany

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The substantial decline in sales over the past three years in Germany is largely attributed to the impact of mass-scale unauthorised services. However, efforts to establish a legitimate online music market are forging ahead. Phonoline for example, the cross-industry business-to-business platform for online retailers and portals offering music services, is set to launch this month with many services able to offer 250,000 tracks at launch from all five majors and many independent labels. The German music industry has also played a leading role in the international record industry's educational efforts to highlight the illegality of file-swapping and the damage it inflicts, by launching a national version of the Pro-music education website in December.

The German music market has fallen for six consecutive years
Between 1997 and 2003, the value of the German music market lost 800 million euro - that's a fall of more than 30% over three years
CD album sales have fallen by over 30% since 2000, single sales dropped by nearly 50%
Per-capita sales fell from 3 (units) in 2000 to 2 in 2003
There are many legal offers in Germany, e.g.: karstadt.de, tiscali.de; hotvision.de, mtv.de, musicload.de, cts.de etc.
PhonoLine, Germany's intermediary technology platform for online retailing, will launch in March
During 2003 some 325 million CDs were burned with music content compared with 147 million sold
7.3 million people downloaded a total of 602 million music files in 2003
Only 13% of the German population believe that file sharing is legal, compared with 74% who believe that it is illegal
60% of Germans are supportive of the industry taking legal action against heavy file sharers to protect copyrighted music
65% of Germans believe that such action will encourage people to stop or at least reduce, file sharing activity