Despite the potential downturn from COVID, Italy’s music industry has grown in the first half of 2020 thanks to huge streaming growth.

Near the start of the year, forecasts for Italy’s economy were not looking good as the impact of Coronavirus made of the earliest big impacts in the country. Despite predictions of losses across the board, their music industry has still seen growth in the first half of 2020.

The latest IFPI report shows that Italy’s recorded music industry saw 2.1% growth for H1 2020, compared to the same period last year. Over 80% of their H1 earnings came from music streaming revenues which increased by a huge 26.4% year on year.

Physical music revenues were however, unsurprisingly, down significantly for the period. Physical music sold 47.9% less than in the first half of 2019 following continuing trends that were worsened by the impact of Coronavirus and people spending less because of that.

Music streaming now makes up a huge majority in the earnings for the music industry in Italy and is helping it to continue earning and growing even in such difficult times of losses elsewhere. Italy’s leading music analysts, FIMI, found that older audiences were taking up streaming this year which helped to grow it so significantly.

FIMI CEO, Enzo Mazza said: “We saw an increase in adults using the streaming services. The so-called lockdown economy gave a strong push to digital in Italy and a lot of adult consumers turned to E-Commerce and streaming.”

It’s interesting to see how much streaming has grown in Italy and the impact of that. Music streaming is huge but there are many people who still don’t use it. If more generations have been picking the format up this year then we could be seeing a spectacular year for digital music.