James Delahunty
23 Jan 2006 7:57
Eric Nicoli, the chairman of the EMI group, has said that digital music will make up for the loss of music sales and become a quarter of the music industry's sales by 2010. He also commented about the poor success and promise shown by music subscription services and mobile music downloads. "Our belief is that the [total] market will be bigger in 2010 than it is today - and potentially much bigger," Nicoli said in an interview with Reuters.
"We've seen a tripling [of download sales] in the last year and we've hardly gotten started," he said. "The day is surely within our sights when digital growth outstrips physical decline and we can all compete for share of a growing pie." So far, most music services are failing to provide real competition to Apple's iTunes music service, which has been surprising to the labels, especially when they are offering subscription services.
"We thought subscriptions would be huge - they haven't been," Nicoli said. Mobile music downloads are also not proving to be popular enough yet. "We're at year zero - if that - with mobile," he said. He commented that allowing consumers to download individual tracks from albums (or the "unbundling" of music) is vital to the success of digital music. "The pessimists will say that's a problem, but our research suggest that the net effect of unbundling is a positive," he said.
Source:
The Register