Quote:
Originally Posted by mr ploppy
Not true. Revenue for the music industry has increased year on year since the advent of Napster in the 90s, the publicity about which made mp3 downloading a mainstream activity.
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Uh... no.
US music recording sales dropped about
50% between 1999 and 2009.
http://money.cnn.com/2010/02/02/news...usic_industry/
Global recording sales fell by about the same amount.
Meanwhile, growth of digital sales has slowed and may be plateauing:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/24/te...y/24music.html
And while concerts have done better in recent years, concert sales grosses in North America fell by 26% in 2010, as attendance dropped by 12%:
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118029386
Apparently the UK is a small bright spot -- as indicated by the very report you cite, which points out that the UK's increase in revenues in 2009 "bucked the trends" in previous years and internationally.
Again there are lots of reasons for the various sales losses: A broad-based international recession, rising ticket prices, no more re-purchasing of vinyl or tape. And again, I do not definitively state that if CD's had effective DRM that anything would be different.
But there really is little doubt that recordings are suffering (contrary to KevinH's claims), or that piracy has reduced sales and drastically slowed the adoption of paid downloads of music.