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Digital growth offsets CD decline in six markets, but slump overall

By | Published on Thursday 29 April 2010

The UK wasn’t the only market to see digital sales start to compensate for the ongoing slump in CD sales in the recorded music space in 2009.

As previously reported, UK record label trade body the BPI revealed at the start of the week that the British record industry saw albeit modest market growth for the first time in a while last year, with the market up 1.4% overall. According to the International Federation Of The Phonographic Industry, which published its own book of 2009 sales stats yesterday, India, South Korea, Thailand, Mexico and Australia all also saw the growth in digital sales offset physical decline.

Nevertheless, on a global level record industry revenues fell once again, down 7.2% to $17.03 billion. Worldwide, although digital revenue was up 9.2%, and physical sales decline slowed down on recent years, the 12.7% drop in CD sales meant an overall slump. And declining CD sales in the two largest music markets in particular, so that’s the US and Japan, offset successes in those other six territories to ensure another revenue slide overall.

In Europe, the UK did well and Sweden saw its recorded music market soar 11.9%, possibly because of the previously reported new IPRED law which made it easier for copyright owners to identify online infringers, and which did seem to result in a slump in illegal file-sharing in the country (though it’s possible that was partly because more prolific file-sharers got better at hiding their infringement).

Another country that has been getting hardline about online piracy, France, saw its record industry decline 2.7%, though that’s a modest slide compared to recent years. In Germany, where the record industry is lobbying political types for French-style three-strikes legislation, the market was down, but only by 3%. Spain and Italy, meanwhile, suffered yet more serious decline, down 14.3% and 17.4% respectively.

As always, most markets relied heavily on big sales of a small number of albums. Worldwide the big bank roller was Susan Boyle, who sold 8.3 million copies of her debut album in 2009, despite it coming out pretty close to the end of the year.



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