James Delahunty
14 Jul 2005 4:23
In the United States, the sale of legal downloads has jumped dramatically over the same period of last year. Between January 2005 and June 2005, Internet users downloaded 158 million individual songs, compared to 55 million in the same 2004 period. Nielsen SoundScan, a company that tracks the sale of music products in the US, made the report. However it is not all terrific news for the U.S. Recording Industry as the sale of CDs decreased by 7%.
Legal downloads now account for 6% of all music sales. Analysts say the creation of new pay sites is responsible for the giant leap and pointed out that users are still flocking in increasing numbers to Apple's iTunes Music Store (iTMS) to buy music to store on their iPods. The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) also announced excellent results in the UK for this year so far. They saw over 10 million downloads so far, that's double the entire 2004 figure.
As for the decrease in CD sales, this time the recording industry can’t really point the blame completely at illegal filesharing, considering there are now so many legal alternatives that are doing fantastic. In the early days of P2P, it was easy to blame it for losses due to the fact that the recording industry offered no legal alternatives. However that has not put them off perusing file sharers for sharing their music collections with each other.
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has kept up its non-working sue-em-all tactic in the United States and several more attempts have been made elsewhere and have mixed results. In Ireland last week, the High Court in Dublin ruled that ISPs must hand the details of 17 alleged Internet pirates to the Irish Recorded Music Association (IRMA). However, Dutch anti-piracy foundation Brein didn’t get such a warm welcome in their country when a judge declined to force the ISPs to hand over details, saying basically the evidence gathering tactics (spying on shared folders) has questionable legality due to he countries privacy laws.
Source:
CBC