NEWSLETTER Q1 2022

The recorded music market in Latin America saw growth of 31.2% in 2021– one of the highest growth rates globally. In a breakthrough moment, annual recorded music revenues in the region exceeded US$1 billion in 2021. Brazil and Mexico retained their positions as the largest Latin American markets, responsible for 66.5% of the region’s revenues. In a sign of growth elsewhere in the region, this share was down 0.5% from 2020. Streaming accounted for 85.9% of the market, one of the highest proportions in any region. The Latin American growth rate outpaced the overall global growth rate of 18.5% The region has posted twelve years of consecutive growth, and the revenue increase seen in 2021 is the strongest in IFPI’s reporting records, exceeding 30% for the first time.

IFPI content protection strategy leads to positive results in Latin America. An ongoing content protection campaign conducted by the IFPI Latin American regional office, in coordination with National Groups, has resulted in a significant increase in removal of infringing music content from local blogs, sites and social media pages. More than 53 million infringing links for music content were delisted from Google and Bing search results while another 199,000 links and 10,000 social media posts were removed as part of a monitoring campaign. In parallel, multiple sites were targeted as part of escalation procedures against infringing music sources and 244 sites were removed as well as 34 messaging channels and groups and 160 mobile music apps. The IFPI Latin America Regional Office’s content protection and monitoring campaign is an important strategy in tackling music piracy on online platforms and intermediaries and protecting members’ repertoire.

IFPI supports initiative in Brazil to drive stronger actions against IP crimes. In February, IFPI representatives, along with a total of 53 state prosecutors and cyber police attended the first round of the IP Cyber Talks seminar in Minas Gerais, Brazil. The seminar was the first of a series of events which set out to engage state prosecutor offices and special police units across Brazil to build up a network of cooperation to drive more disruptive actions against perpetrators of online IP crimes. Across the series of events, successful strategies, and tools, such as domain suspension and site blocking, are being discussed. The initiative is supported by international agencies including the Police Intellectual Property Unit of the City of London Police, the FBI, and the US Department of Justice.

Cooperation agreement secured between IFPI and the Peruvian copyright office. IFPI’s Latin American Office have signed a cooperation agreement with INDECOPI (the Peruvian Institute for the Defense of Competition and the Protection of Intellectual Property). The agreement pays particular attention to the exchanging of information that detects infringing sites which violate copyright and related rights. INDECOPI has already ordered some blocking actions against stream ripping sites and this agreement brings further opportunities to protect the content of IFPI’s members in Peru.

IFPI sets global framework for inclusion of YouTube consumption in national music charts. In January, IFPI launched its music charts framework that will facilitate the inclusion of YouTube streams into national charts in a globally consistent way. The newly launched framework is the result of an in-depth process between IFPI, it’s national groups, charts compilers and YouTube, including extensive in-market tests across a variety of territories. As a result, YouTube consumption is now included in the national charts in the biggest markets in Latin America, Brazil and Mexico. Once the framework has been used in these first phase countries, IFPI will work with interested charts compilers and national groups in other markets to implement this framework throughout 2022. This is an important step forward for the industry and in IFPI’s work to ensure that charts around the world remain relevant in accurately reflecting the way fans engage with music today.

Streaming charts now fully established across Latam region. – Thanks to newly launched charts in Paraguay and Honduras, all seventeen Latin American markets (with the exception of Venezuela) will now release weekly charts which include audio streaming data. Further to this, charts in Brazil and Mexico will now integrate eligible YouTube streams. This is an important step forward for the Latin American music market as IFPI continues its work to establish and standardise charts around the world.