December 24, 2008

Piracy overtaken by legal downloads

It must be a dream come true for the music industry as recent suggest that finally legal downloads of music have now overtaken illegal downloads and out of interest CD sales are also down.

Fifteen percent of Internet users purchased music from online music stores, such as iTunes and AmazonMP3, which is an increase of 2 percentage points over last year and equates to approximately 2.8 million additional music-download customers.

The volume of CDs purchased declined by 19 percent in Q3 compared to last year.

Year-over-year consumer demand for music among Internet users in the U.S. fell 2 percent in the third quarter (Q3) of 2008.

CD sales volume were among teens (down 34 percent) and among adults age 26 to 35 (down 36 percent). CD purchases by adults age 36 and older showed a more moderate decline of 10 percent.

This just shows that what the consumers have been saying for a long time now, that one of the reasons why they resort to illegal downloads is because that is the way that they want their music delivered.

Source [Alley Insider]