international news _ 5th October, 2005

Japan Leads Digital Music Revolution

International trade body IFPI have reported that in the first half of 2005 sales of physical music recordings dropped 6.3% in value coming in at a lowly US$12.4 billion. The slump has been blamed on a retail price reduction as well as a drop in sales of DVD music videos. Illegal downloads and CD burning have also somehow been linked to the decrease in revenue obviously relying heavily on well proven evidence. However, while there is a slump in physical sales, digital sales continue to boom. The first half of 2005 saw an estimated 200% increase to a figure of approximately US$790 million. This means that digital downloads now represent 6% of global music sales.

Countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom showed large improvements in digital music download sales with total downloads experiencing 200% and 900% increases in the countries respectively. Despite these large increases Japan retains the crown for greatest digital sales. US$133 million in revenue was recorded for Higher Frequency's homeland with 96% of this income coming from mobile phone downloads. These figures seem to provide evidence that a complete shift from optical to digital media may come sooner rather than later. (Nick Lawrence)