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Music Sales Dropped 10 Percent Last Year |
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 Digital music sales increased
significantly last year, but overall music sales dropped. The
International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) alleges
that piracy is to blame for the decrease in overall music sales. IFPI
announced that record companies' revenue from digital music sales rose
40 percent to $2.9 billion over the past year, while global music
industry sales declined by around 10 percent in 2007.
"Unpaid
copying and downloading lies at the root of the recording industry's
problems, and internet service providers must be at the heart of the
solution," said Geoff Taylor, chief executive of UK's BPI, as quoted by
BBC News. "2008 must become the year when talk becomes action."
Apparently, the music industry did not take into account the decrease in music quality in recent years as a factor.
"A
turning tide of opinion is one thing – a concrete programme of action
is another. There is only one acceptable moment for ISPs to start
taking responsibility for protecting content – and that moment is now,"
said IFPI Chairman and CEO John Kennedy.
The report also noted
that single track downloads, the most popular digital music format,
grew by 53 percent to 1.7 billion and digital sales now account for an
estimated 15 percent of the global music market, up from 11 percent in
2006 and zero in 2003.
While there are more than 500 legitimate
digital music services worldwide, offering over 6 million tracks, the
International Federation of the Phonographic Industry alleges that the
ratio of unlicensed tracks downloaded to legal tracks sold is about 20
to 1, amounting to billions of illegal tracks downloaded each year.
IFPI
is apparently committed to push for Internet traffic filtering. This
comes just shortly after the its bigger brother, the Motion Picture
Association of America, has finally admitted that it overinflated by a
factor of three the figures which claimed that college students were
responsible for 44 percent of the movie industry’s alleged domestic
losses, because of illegal downloading.
The MPAA is a key ally
in pushing through legislation which is already halfway to being
enacted. Another ally appears to be the French President Nicholas
Sarkozy, who is mentioned in the IFPI report as one of the promoters of
severe anti-piracy laws. Sarkozy called in November for ISPs operating
in France to automatically disconnect customers involved in piracy.
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