Musica Mia: Italian Music Industry

Musica Mia, My Music is a little guide to Italian music available in the United States and imported from Italy. We have selected Italian music from Amazon.com featuring CDs from Italy like Festival of Sanremo and Greatest Hits by Italian singers and groups. You will also find a selection of websites that carry Italian MP3 songs and albums as well as iTunes of Italian artists. If you prefer to order directly from Italy, ibs.it will ship your Italian music, movies, books and video games anywhere in the world. We hope you'll enjoy Musica Mia and find it useful, we encourage you to suggest this site to your friends and to include it in your favorite websites. Grazie!

The Music of Italy

Italian CDs in USA

Amazon.com

CdUniverse.com

ArkivMusic Classical

Italian MP3, iTunes

Italian Radio

List of radio stations

Italian CDs from Italy

ibs.it musica italiana

Italian Music Industry

A recent economics report says that the music industry in Italy made 2.3 billion € in 2004.
That sum refers to the sale of CDs, music electronics, musical instruments, and ticket sales for live performances; it represents a 4.35% growth over 2004.
The actual sale of music albums has decreased slightly, but there has been a compensatory increase in paid-for digitally downloaded music from industry-approved sites.
By way of comparison, the Italian recording industry ranks eighth in the world; Italians own 0.7 music albums per capita as opposed to the USA, in first-place with 2.7.
The report cites a 20% increase in 2004 over 2003 in paid royalties for on-air as well as live music.
Nationwide, there are three state-run and three private TV networks. All provide live music at least some of the time, thus giving work to musicians, singers, and dancers.
Many large cities in Italy have local TV stations, as well, which may provide live folk or dialect music often of interest only to the immediate area. Book and CD superstores have entered the Italian market over the last decade.
The largest of these chains is Feltrinelli, originally a publishing house in the 1950s. In 2001, it geared up to the level of Multimedia Store and now sells massive quantities of recorded music.
There are, as of 2006, 14 such mega-stores in Italy, with more planned. FNAC is another large chain, originally French. It has six large outlets in Italy. These stores also serve as venues for music performance, hosting several concerts a week.