So that brings us to a question; if the music industry cited the 2004 anti-piracy efforts for the rise of music sales, then why were their anti-piracy efforts ineffective in 2005? Perhaps the answer is simply that the RIAA was wrong in 2004? One thing that is easily forgotten by music companies is that economical changes affect sales all around the world - sometimes people have less or more money to spend on music. Then you must remember that technology advances lead to new "must have" products every year that consumers buy up, leaving them with less money to spend on music. Then, there is also another factor; maybe less people were really interested in the music selection major labels provided in 2004.
It seems the the major music labels of the world believe that all their customers have the same amount of money each year and spend it on the same things. New gadgets like Sony's PlayStation Portable and new iPods (and other MP3 players) in 2005 were purchased with many consumers' spare cash, leaving them less money to spend on music. Also, take into account some of the recent natural disasters in the world, such as the December 2004 Asian tsunami disaster which saw many people donating large amounts of money in early 2005 to help out. There are countless things that are not music-related that could have contributed to the drop in CD sales.
Legal music downloads have also grown in popularity. Many consumers now have turned from buying CDs and instead just pay for single downloads instead of full albums on CD. Does piracy affect music sales? Of course it does but can it be solely blamed for CD sales drops in 2005? That's very doubtful. It is probably just easier for the music companies to blame piracy (particularly file sharing piracy) for drops in CD sales than to accept that some consumers were less interested in music in 2005 for example.
Source:
The Register