Digital music sales triple in 2005 |
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Fri, 20 Jan 2006 10:45
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LONDON: Global sales of digital music almost tripled in 2005, accounting for $1.1 billion, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. Digital music constitutes 6 per cent of the industry's total sales, up from virtually nil two years ago, but intrinsically, the industry revenue as a whole declined to $13.2 billion in the first half of the year from $13.4 billion in the corresponding previous year period.
The federation said legitimate music business is gradually becoming the norm and its research in Britain and Germany indicated that more music fans are legally downloading music than illegally doing so through file swapping.
Another noteworthy feature is that sales of mobile phone ringtones now account for 40 per cent of the revenues from digital music, the federation said.
The London-based federation said subscriber base for services like RealNetworks' Rhapsody, Napster and Yahoo Music, which offer music for a monthly fee, grew from 1.5 million to 2.8 million.
"2005 was the year that the digital music market took shape," federation chairman John Kennedy said. He added that the number of court judgements against unauthorised file sharing in 2005, including the ones involving Kazaa and Grokster, had helped create an awareness about legal downloads. The federation is now intending to sue internet service providers who promote music piracy. It had approached major ISPs a year ago seeking their cooperation in this matter and evolving coordinated action plan against music piracy. Kennedy said he had received "effectively a zero response."
The federation said music lovers across the world downloaded 420 million single tracks in 2005. This is more than double the 156 million downloaded in 2004, generating revenue of $380 million. In the U.S., single-track downloads doubled year-on-year to 353 million units in 2005. Album downloads stood at 16 million, which is 3 per cent of the total U.S. album market. In the U.K., there were 26 million single-track downloads, in Germany 21 million and France 15 million.
The absence of any interoperability features among various music devices and download systems is hampering the growth of digital music market, according to the federation. Apple Computer Inc.'s iPod players and the iTunes download system use a particular technology, which is different the one used by others.
Industry watchers predict that in the couple of years ahead many file-sharing networks will attempt to become legitimate by incorporating filtering software to screen copyrighted music.
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