Dave Horvath
18 Jan 2007 5:42
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) released a statement that online music sales have doubled in profit this past year, reaching an astounding $2billion (£1billion) and roughly 10% in overall sales. This may be good news to some, but the IFPI believes that illegal file sharing of these music files has not allowed them to reach the "holy grail" of music sales since CD sales have fallen off the map.
The IFPI 2007 digital music report showed that 795 million digital songs were downloaded legally last year, up by 89% from 2005, accross some 500 legitimate download services.
The IFPI believes that online music sales could become a rich quarter of the worldwide market in sales by 2010. With that they have stated that they would like to see more of a crackdown on illegal file sharing.
IFPI chairman John Kennedy said, "The pace of transformation in our industry is breathtaking, but at the moment the holy grail is evading us. I would like to be announcing that a fall in CD sales is being compensated for by an equal or greater increase in online and mobile revenues. But that is not yet happening on a global basis."
The IFPI said some 30,000 class action lawsuits against file-sharers has helped give some edge to their war on piracy, but have urged ISPs to assist them by now allowing such file sharing services to be setup on their servers.
Source:
BBC