There are 1,288 ‘specialist music retailers’ in Germany – and we, as the Kontrabass-Atelier double bass workshop, are one of them. Whilst the sector’s total turnover rose by 17 per cent between 2020 and 2024, this turnover is being shared amongst an ever-smaller number of market players.
In 2024, there were nine specialist retailers in Germany with an annual turnover of more than 10 million Euros – these nine accounted for 0.7 per cent of all specialist retailers. And in 2024, this group – comprising less than 1 per cent of retailers – accounted for over 70 per cent of turnover, with the trend set to rise. And whilst turnover rose overall, small and medium-sized retailers (i.e. those with an annual turnover of between 100,000 and 5 million euros) collectively recorded a fall in turnover of 19 million Euros, or just under 5 per cent – accompanied by a 1 per cent decline in the number of businesses.
There are also significant regional differences; music retailers are distributed very unevenly across the federal states. In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, there are (were?) just seven companies, whilst in Bavaria there are still 290 businesses, including the world’s highest-turnover music retailer, which alone (!) generates 1.53 billion Euros in annual turnover.
However, the group of smaller retailers is also very diverse: “The high proportion of businesses with an annual turnover of less than 100,000 Euros (2024: 39 % of all businesses) suggests that many professional and amateur musicians work as retailers on a part-time basis and have applied for a trading licence for this purpose, which means they are recorded in the statistics as taxable businesses,” says the MIZ (Music Information Centre), explaining the figures from the Federal Statistical Office.
