“The last time music was a growth business was 1999 — back when people bought millions of Britney Spears CDs, and GeoCities was the third-most popular Web property in the world,” Peter Kafka reports for AllThingsD. “You know what’s happened since then.”
“But music’s slide may have finally stopped,” Kafka reports. “Last year, recorded-music sales inched up 0.3 percent worldwide, to $16.5 billion, according to industry trade group IFPI. That’s the first time global sales have increased since the Napster era, and it echoes bumps we’ve seen earlier in the U.S. and other markets.”
Read more in the full article here.
Related articles:
Nielsen: More U.S. teens listen to music via YouTube than iTunes, CDs, or radio – August 14, 2012
Gartner says worldwide online music revenue on record pace in 2011 – November 9, 2011
Jon Bon Jovi: ‘Steve Jobs is personally responsible for killing the music business’ – March 14, 2011
Speaking of Britney Spears, I still listen to her music on my iPod.
Remember that school girl uniform?
YES. I. DO!
0.3%? Isn’t that within the margin of error?
It’s not a survey, it’s a report.
A report of what? A survey? How was this value estimated? How were the data sampled?
Well?
Troll.
Reflexus moronus subspecies Apple fanboi.
This article does not tell us who the sellers are. If the majority of the sellers are the artists themselves and not “Them big fat bastards” Record companies, then the shift up is a positive one and to be heralded. If not, then we can expect new entrants into the music industry to be squeezed for every drop of creativity they have for a sausage the size of a bean and a slew of factory pop churned out to meet the expectations of a market geared up for the looks of the performers and not the content of their product.
Agreed. “The Music Industry” might be a misnomer.
What exactly does that mean? Does it include Neutral Bling Hotel and the Band Camp page?
Steve Jobs said 99 cent song sales will help combat music piracy, not destroy the industry. He was apparently right.
iTunes problem is I already own the music I want from my CD collection ripped to Apple Lossless. I occasionally buy new music but more than likely fill in holes in my personal catalogue as they become available or go to being remastered. And why buy a remastered album that’s compressed? The time has come for iTunes to offer up Apple Lossless versions. Even make available a 24 bit audio special section as other services offer up at premium prices. Why not?
Actually, I agree with the evil music executives that piracy nearly killed the pre-recorded music industry.
But it was those same executives who definitively killed the industry for good when they doubled-down on the hyped-up factory pop, teenie idols, talent shows, and computer-generated & corrected crap. Noise generated by computers is not music, and it’s not worth 99 cents per track.