Internet piracy in Germany

SEE ALSO

Unauthorised file-sharing

Broadband penetration in German households is 17%.
During 2004 some 304 million CDs were burned with music content, compared with 147 million sold.
About 7.3 million people downloaded music from the internet. But 80% of all downloads where downloaded from P2P services.
Music files illegally downloaded dropped steeply to under 400 million in 2004 from more than 600 million in 2003 (GFK)

Awareness

79% of the German population know that file sharing is illegal.
66% of Germans are supportive of the industry taking legal action against heavy file-sharers.
71% of Germans believe that such action will encourage people to stop or at least reduce file-sharing activity.

State of the local industry

The German music market has fallen for seven consecutive years. Between 1997 and 2004, the value of the German music market lost 994 million euro - a fall of more than 35%.
In 2004 sales in Germany fell 4.2% in value, the most modest sales decline in three years.
CD album sales have fallen by over 30% since 2000, single sales dropped by nearly 60%.
Per-capita sales fell from 3 (units) in 2000 to 2 in 2003.

Legitimate Services

There are more than 20 legal services in Germany, including: iTunes, karstadt.de, tiscali.de; hotvision.de, mtv.de, musicload.de, eventim-music.de, MusicdownloadsAOL
There were some 9 million downloads sold legally in Germany in 2004. A total of 7.5 million tracks and about 360 thousand 'bundles' were downloaded from legal sources.