Digital music sales offset revenue loss in physical music sales, says IFPI |
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Mon, 03 Oct 2005 21:05
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LONDON - The digital music market is surging ahead despite revenue losses in the sales of other formats of music like those on CDs, says a new report released by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry on Monday.
The industry said that the sales for digital music in the first six months of the year totaled an impressive $790 million or 6 percent of the overall industry sales. This figure is nearly triple that of the $220 million registered at the same time last year. However, the sales of the physical formats including CDs fell by 6.3 percent to $12.4 billion, the report said.
"The digital music boom is continuing and it is growing at an exciting pace for the music industry," the IFPI said in a statement. The report said that the main reasons for the digital music sales boom could be attributed to the general availability of broadband, the increasing proliferation of 3G mobile phones and the popularity of portable music players like Apple's iPod. The digital music market has raced ahead of the value of the global singles market, the report said.
Commenting on the findings, IFPI Chairman and CEO John Kennedy said, "More and more people in a growing number of countries are turning to the new legal ways of downloading music on the internet or via mobile phones." He added that the legal moves to stop piracy were beginning to bear fruit, but "digital and physical piracy remain a big threat to our business in many markets."
Kennedy said that the industry's priorities now "are to further grow this emerging digital music business while stepping up our efforts to protect it from copyright theft."
The report said that the boom in digital music sales had compensated for the steep fall in physical retail sales in Germany. Music downloads grew to 8.5 million in that country.
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