James Delahunty
23 Mar 2005 12:36
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has said that shipments of music have actually increased for the first time in five years n 2004. 814 million units were shipped, which is a slight increase of 2%. The total revenue for music shipments reached $12 billion which is an increase of 2.5%. Over the past few years global sales of music were at a steady decrease and the Recording Industry was quick to point a finger at Internet Piracy as the number one reason for the fall in music sales.
However, sales of items such as DVDs were increasing as more people began using other technologies. The Recording Industry stayed on the war path against file-sharing however. In the U.S. thousands of P2P users have been sued by the RIAA for allegedly sharing copyrighted music on P2P networks. The fight spread to Europe eventually with the IFPI filing lawsuits against file-sharers. However, overall P2P usage remained on an increase.
Popularity of online music download services has also increased and helped the recording industry in their battle as they now use them as an example of how Internet users could purchase digital copies of music legally. However, the biggest drawback is DRM (Digital Rights Management) protection which limits what the owners can do with the files. It will be interesting to see how the global music sales will go in 2005.
Source:
Betanews