Music downloads top Billion Dollar mark in sales worldwide
Thu Jan 19 2006 08:08:41 ET
IFPI to release 2005 music download numbers in London within the hour...
Music industry sources tell DRUDGE REPORT that Europe?s Recording Industry Association the IFPI will show sales of music via the internet and mobile phones generated sales of $1.1 billion for record companies ? up from US$380 million in 2004.
The findings are released today in IFPI?s Digital Music Report 2006, a comprehensive review of the development of the digital music market internationally.
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Music fans downloaded 420 million single tracks from the internet last year ? twenty times more than two years earlier ? while the volume of music licensed by record companies doubled to over 2 million songs. Digital music now accounts for about 6% of record companies? revenues, up from practically zero two years ago.
Already in the UK and Germany - two of the biggest digital markets worldwide - legal buying from sites like iTunes, Musicload and MSN actually exceeds 'illegal' file-swapping.
Single track downloads in the US more than doubled in 2005 to 353 million (Nielsen SoundScan), with a weekly sales average of 7 million tracks. Digital album downloads grew to 16 million, or 2.6% of the album market, up from 1% in 2004.
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