Music sales revenue rises as fans go digital

THE UK MUSIC MARKET has reported a slight increase in total recorded music sales for the first time in five years, showing that record companies should be concentrating on legal ways for people to find digital music.

There was a 1.4 per cent annual increase in trade revenues for 2009 to £928.8 million, with digital revenues now representing a fifth of overall recorded music sales.

In the online sector sales of £83.7 million were for digital tracks, £63.7 million from albums and £3 million from video. There was a 51.7 per cent increase in digital sales to £154 million overall in 2009.

Money from ad-supported services like Spotify and Last.fm contributed 247 per cent more in industry income to £8.2 million, but this was less than one per cent of the total sales.

This shows that music companies that put effort into offering digital services could reap rewards, but it has obviously not gone far enough, as there was still a big reliance on physical formats like CDs.

Sales of CDs still made up a largest proportion of the recorded music market's total revenues, but as those revenues have gone down for the sixth successive year, it isn't what the music industry should be relying on for the future.

It showed how the music industry is still relying far too much on physical formats when Geoff Taylor, chief executive of the British Phonographic Industry trade association said, “The CD continues to show greater resilience than many predicted – it is an excellent digital product.”

He also said, “The pace of growth of new digital services is encouraging, but the size of the market continues to be constrained by competition from illegal downloads.” µ