globeandmail.com: Music downloads in downward trend — While the music industry will blame this on piracy I think it goes deeper — to the heart of the business. There is virtually no way for most buyers to hear new music that they may want to purchase since the consolidation of the radio industry. Blame the FCC for allowing this.
Mr. Bernoff questions whether consumers are reaching their saturation level for music downloads. He found that iTunes’ rapid expansion rate has slowed. The service grew sevenfold between April, 2004, and January, 2006, but since then the number of transactions has dropped by 58 per cent.
The downward trend is not limited to iTunes, which, according to Apple, accounts for 88 per cent of music purchased off the Web in the United States. Sales of all music downloads in the U.S. have stalled in the second half of the year, falling from 144 million tracks in the first quarter to 137 million in each of the second and third quarters, according to Nielsen SoundScan, which tracks industry figures.
The trend is unwelcome news for the industry. Illegal downloads have chiselled billions of dollars out of the music industry’s revenue base over the last six years. In the U.S. alone, annual sales were down 23 per cent between 1999 and 2005 to $11.2-billion, according to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
#26 I have been an XM subscriber for over four years now, and when I find myself dancing in the driver’s seat, I just hit the memory button.
That’s fine, but we’d all prefer that you pulled over to the side of the road until this irrational fit of dancing was over.
And we thought cell phones were dangerous 🙂
I still refer to my music player as my HiFi.. My music is on everything from 78’s to CD. I don’t have an ipod, there are other things to think about as I go through life, without hopping around like a fool with some horrible noise in my ears. If they want to bring up record sales, then find a few performers who can make music, not noise…
#32 – you can find quite a few performers who can make something other than noise… a few thousand or more in just that past year or so… You just have to look past corporate radio and into the indie scene.