Australian music sales up
p2pnet.net News:- "Contrary to the music industry Chicken Littles, the sky is not falling down."
That’s the way Bernard Zuel sums in up in his Sydney Morning Herald report here in which he points out that after several years warning of dire consequences for record companies because of rampant music downloading and copying, "the Australian Record Industry Association yesterday released sales figures for 2003 showing an increase of nearly 8 per cent".
Album sales topped 50 million units, up from nearly 47 million in 2002, "But even more dramatic was the increase in music DVDs where sales doubled in the year to nearly 5 million units," says rthe SMH report."
The bad news, Zuel adds, was the continued decline in sales of CD singles which dropped nearly 17 per cent, or 2 million CDs.
"And at the terminal end of the industry, sales of cassettes continued their long-term collapse, dropping by nearly 40 per cent. In 2003 there were only 359,909 cassettes sold."
