Germans have joined the UK in a landmark year of music streaming with people listening more than ever.

Around the world, music streaming services have become the number one destination for music addicts to casual listeners to get their fix. 2019 saw a monumental decade of music streaming close on a major high that is evident in Germany’s streaming figures.

Music streams in Germany hit 107 billion this year, research by GfK Entertainment in cooperation with the country’s Federal Association of the Music Industry (BVMI) shows. The UK also surpassed 100 billion streams last year for the first time.

Hitting the 100 billion mark isn’t just a giant landmark in listening throughout Germany but also shows the incredible growth of streaming services and music listening year-on-year.

Music streams in the country have nearly doubled in 2 years since 2017, when Germany streamed music 56.4 billion times. In 2018, Germans streamed music 79.5 billion times. That represents 35% more listening in just one year following a decade of continuous growth that is clearly not slowing.

BVMI’s CEO, Dr. Florian Drücke said: “Over a hundred billion audio streams in Germany in 2019 – this is not only a milestone, you can also see the continued considerable dynamism in this area and thus the acceptance among music fans. Streaming continues to expand its position, but at the same time the other usage formats remain relevant, the offer of our members continues to range from vinyl to the cloud.”

Their research noted how Christmas music had been a particular boost to streaming numbers. The season created tens of millions of streams on old songs that hadn’t been ranking for the rest of the year. Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’ broke the record for most streams in a single day with 3.2 million on December 24th, Christmas Eve.

GfK Entertainment’s Managing Director, Dr. Mathias Giloth said: “Music streaming is popular across all genres – and the playlists were particularly hot at Christmas time. Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve had new records in 2019 with 431 million and 407 million hits [respectively].

“The days with the most streaming so far have been set up. At the beginning of the year, the daily number of hits was still less than 250 million, which shows the enormous leaps in the format that has been part of the Official German Charts since 2014.”