INSIGHTS
- The global new media art market is an estimated US$170 billion as of 2017, including US$717.4 million in online sales.
OVERVIEW
While there is no pre-existing information to fully answer your question, we've used the available data to pull together key findings:
As of 2018, the global art and collectibles market is worth over US$1 trillion, and the online art market was worth US$4.22 billion as of 2017, having grown 12% annually. According to a report by Hiscox Online Art, 17% of buyers purchased a new media art piece — using this percentage as an approximation, we can calculate the new media art market in US$170 billion, including US$717.4 million in online sales.
Below you'll find an outline of our research methodology to better understand why information you've requested is publicly unavailable, as well as a deep dive into our findings.
METHODOLOGY
In order to answer your query, we looked for information on time-based media art, new media art, video art and digital art in consultancies, studies and annual earnings reports. We checked sources like IbisWorld, Markets and Markets, Research and Markets, Mckinsey, Deloitte, KPMG, BCG, ATK, Bain, Ipsos, Gfk, JD Power, Kantar and Nielsen. We also looked for reports from US-based cultural organizations like International Digital Media and Arts Association (iDMAa), the National Art Education Association, Arts.gov and Arts, Culture and Media Student Association (ARTSA), but no relevant figures could be located.
We also looked at financial statements, searching for a breakdown of earnings, for Christie's, Phillips, Sotheby's, Bonhams, DOYLE and Heritage Auctions, but this strategy also proved unsuccessful.
We determined that the information is not publicly available, which could be for a number of reasons. Since time-based media art is a niche sub category in the art market, data pertaining exclusively to TBM has not been compiled to this date. Video art in any form still represents a small fraction of the market, and numbers on sales are very volatile from year to year, making it hard to calculate an overall annual market size. Additionally, data for years prior to 2015 was not available in any of the sources consulted.
Therefore, we provided an overall market size for new media art (which is the term most often used to refer to video and digital art) as of 2017, as well as some numbers on online art sales. Please note that the market size is an estimation, and should be taken as such.
USEFUL FINDINGS
According to UNICO, the global art and collectibles market is worth over US$1 trillion as of 2018. In terms of digital, the digital native population generates around US$44 billion in revenue in the digital collectibles space — though it is not exclusive to art pieces.
The online art market (as in, pieces of art sold online) was estimated to be US$4.22 billion as of 2017, according to a report by Hiscox Online Art reproduced by Widewalls. The market keeps growing, having increased 12% annually, though the growth trend has slowed down compared to rates seen in 2016 (15%) and 2015 (24%).
The same report pointed out that new media art, such as video art and digital art, is growing in popularity as well, with 17% of buyers having purchased a new media art piece in the last year. Using this percentage as proxy of the market share of new media art (such as video art and digital art), we can deduce that 17% of the total global art market (worth US$1 trillion) would be new media art — which would come up to US$170 billion. Following the same method, new media art would represent 17%, or US$717.4 million, of the online art market.
The Hiscox study found that 50% of new media art pieces online sales were for one piece, 40% were for two to five pieces, 5% were for 11 to 20 pieces and 5% were for over 21 pieces.
Online sales are up for auction houses. Christie's online sales grew 34% to US$217 million in 2016, whereas Sotheby's grew 19% to US$155 million — at a time were auctions in general are declining: Christie's and Sotheby's physical auction sales fell 22% and 29%, respectively.
CONCLUSION
To wrap up, despite limited availability of information to answer your query, we gathered enough publicly available information to calculate the new media art market in US$170 billion as of 2017, including US$717.4 million in online sales.