The Daily Swarm

Headlines

June 18, 2008

IFPI: Music sales lowest in 20 years...

Worldwide music sales have tumbled to their lowest level since 1985, the year that Jennifer Rush topped the singles charts in Britain with The Power of Love and Dire Straits released Money for Nothing.

The equivalent of 1.86 billion albums were sold last year, counting ten sales of individual songs as the equivalent of one album, according to figures published yesterday by the IFPI, which represents music companies worldwide.

Album sales were down 11 per cent, from 2.09 billion, in figures that include paid-for downloads. In 1985, unit sales were 1.8 billion, as the CD began to increase in popularity, a run of growth that peaked in 1996 with sales of 3.4 billion.

The main cause of the decline continues to be collapsing CD sales, hurt by illegal copying, that are not being offset by growth in download sales. Record company revenues tumbled 8 per cent last year to $19.4 billion, after CD sales fell 13 per cent – more than offsetting the 34 per cent growth in the smaller digital business.