"With over 115 million single tracks sold across all formats, 2008 was the biggest sales year on record in unit terms. Digital growth, however, was not confined to unit sales with labels benefitting from new digital models such as We7 and Comes With Music entering the marketplace in 2008."
Piracy is killing music sales... wasn't that the story?
Today I came across the 2008 report from IFPI that reports among other things on the sales of albums and singles in the UK. Below you can see how things look over the last ten years - and, while we can see that in recent years album sales have fallen, single sales are booming. Moreover -it's clear that today album sales are 10% up on ten years ago - and single sales are 56% higher - all that in spite of the loss of 40% of the wholesale chain in the UK in 2008 with the collapse of Entertainment UK. All of this without looking at additional revenues from DVDs, ringtones, concerts and 'new digital models'.
The industry still claims that over 90% of downloads are pirated - but given that people only have so much to spend on entertainment what can this mean for potential income for the industry? It's clear that volume sales are not the issue.... (and maybe it's no surprise that people given the choice choose to pick three good tracks rather than pay for a whole album?)
But.. that's not the interesting question in all this. Look at the graph and consider... that The Pirate Bay opened in 2003. Correlation, or coincidence?
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