“A report by the trade body IFPI showed legal digital global sales grew by an estimated 25 percent to $3.7 billion in trade value, to account for about 20 percent of the industry’s global recorded music sales, up from 15 percent in 2007,” Holton reports.
“However, the rapid rate of growth has inevitably slowed — digital sales grew by more than 30 percent in 2007 — and the scale of the piracy has eaten into traditional revenues, meaning the overall music market for 2008 is expected to be down about 7 percent. It fell by 8 percent in 2007,” Holton reports. “The report showed about 95 percent of the music downloaded in 2008, or more than 40 billion files, was illegal and not paid for.”
“Single track downloads were up 24 percent in 2008 to 1.4 billion units globally while digital albums were up 36 percent,” Holton reports.
Full article here.
