Creating a global music industry report

Measuring the pulse of the music industry worldwide

The Global Music Report contains a detailed assessment of the recorded music industry for the full year. Overall industry trends, figures, and artist case studies are featured throughout the report that serves as a valuable resource to inform IFPI's subscribing members and partners.

The report also features extensive and authoritative data for the global industry and across more than fifty individual countries.

A functional design approach informed by the industry

The design brief for this project centred around creating a report that is both clear and functional in its presentation of valuable industry figures, and reflective of the lively and energetic tone of the music industry it's reporting on. With the additional value provided to subscribers of the full report, we wanted to reflect this value in our approach to the design style. We developed a bright, clean style with a bold use of type and artist photography.

Displaying complex data

The audience for this report is made up of IFPI’s industry members and businesses that make their strategic decisions based on the numbers and findings delivered in the report. Industry numbers broken down by country are available in an appendix within the report that give insight into the consumption preferences of their markets. This operational value to their subscribers is supported through the provision of the raw data and a digital companion report site to make the content as accessible and reusable as possible.

Creating online content

Along with the printed report, we developed a digital companion that enabled IFPI to provide a premium login area where subscribers could download the accompanying datasets and access an interactive visual dashboard of the country market data. Logged in users are able to have a more customised view of the data where they're able to quickly search and compare countries and download relevant assets.

Additionally, this digital version of the report enabled IFPI to easily share links to relevant materials and share their findings socially – a task that was difficult with the previous print-only version.