Big Music’s 15.8 BILLION dollars !
p2pnet view Music | P2P:- How corporate puff pieces are interpreted by elements of the old and new media is fascinating.
“The corporate music industry has increased its digital revenues by a massive 940% since 2004,” said a report quoted by p2pnet on Thursday.
Put another way, that’s a rise of almost 1,000% over five years, which is pretty impressive by any standard.
p2pnet went on, “But, ‘Overall, global music sales in the first half of 2009 were down by 12% (physical and digital sales) and full year figures are likely to see a similar trend’,” said Big Music’s IFPI.
Reporting on the same release, “The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, a trade body, estimates that 95 per cent of music downloads worldwide are illegal,” says Britain’s prestigious Financial Times.
“The IFPI said physical music sales, such as CDs, fell 16 per cent to $11.6bn. Digital sales growth slowed to 12 per cent, reaching $4.2bn.”
Looked at from a different perspective, $11.6 billion plus $4.2 billion equals $15.8 billion.
That’s fifteen point eight billions dollars !
Not bad. Especially when just about every other corporate sector is reporting massive losses.
Or have we got it wrong ?
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massive 940% – Digital music sales skyrocket by 940%, January 21, 2010
Financial Times – Music body says 95% of downloads illegal as CD sales fall, January 22, 2010
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January 23rd, 2010 at 12:17 pm
But imagine the 95% extra they could earn on that 4.2 billion if nobody would download music illegally. Every download is a lost sale!
haha. right.
January 23rd, 2010 at 2:31 pm
They whine and cry, and blame the big bad filesharers for all the stuff they cant do for the new artists.
A then they bitch cause they ONLY MADE $15.8 billion?? WTF?
Funny, till now I thought my 12yo was bad at math………
January 23rd, 2010 at 11:50 pm
Odd that the recording industry figures do not include concert revenue, the fastest growing portion of recording industry profits.
All artists signed to recording contracts are now forced to give up a substantial portion off their concert gross, as well as everything else from sales of T-shirts to coffee mugs in these so called “360 deals” — or no contract. This is why in the past few years so many established artists refused to renew recording contracts, and instead went with Live Nation, or went independent.
So how much money are the labels making out of “360 deals”? Despite their constant harping about declining CD sales numbers, they act like this major income source doesn’t even exist.
January 24th, 2010 at 3:14 am
Actually, you do have it wrong.
According to the article it’s $15.8 Billion in SALES, not profit. Not to mention that the loss in physical sales is a significantly larger dollar amount than the increase in digital sales, so overall revenue is down from previous years which merely lumps them in with nearly every other corporate sector losing money due to the worldwide financial crash.
It’s a fair argument that the increase in unauthorized downloading (illegal? not from what I’ve read in US copyright law, but I’m not a lawyer) also correlates to a generally poor economy worldwide. People have less cash to spend so they get what they want via other means.
January 24th, 2010 at 4:05 am
@Paul:
There may be a loss in physical sales, that also correlates to a drop in production costs. And, since they’re increasingly pulling in revenue from a zero-cost “product” (online), I’d say there’s less actual profit loss going on here than we can even imagine.
January 24th, 2010 at 6:48 am
The labels are set to make a killing from radio (both traditional radio and internet radio”) due to hugely jacked-up royalty demands. They also get paid for things like music videos on YouTube. Fact is, the recording business has recently exploited many new sources of revenue (including suing fans for downloading music). Even if sales of albums and singles ground to a halt, they would still be raking in $billions.
January 24th, 2010 at 5:20 pm
“The corporate music industry has increased its digital revenues by a massive 940% since 2004,” said a report quoted by p2pnet on Thursday.”
940% of zero is near zero is still near zero so I am not concern by the fact that these parasites might live.
Without iTune they would actually have zero sale. May be we shall bring down iTune to get ride of them a little bit faster.
January 24th, 2010 at 5:22 pm
“The labels are set to make a killing from radio (both traditional radio and internet radio)”
Well. It is not going to work because the market can not support this.
January 25th, 2010 at 6:26 am
They might make some money from Internet radio, but profits from conventional radio seems out of the question, in my opinion, unless you consider that they figure they’ll make more money due to a phalanx of radio stations with extremely narrow playlists.
Come to think of it, that’s the only way they’ll make any money; when the stations play the most popular or requested songs 20 times a day. Jacking up the royalty fees is going to prompt radio stations to narrow their playlists even more. 25 years ago a station used to have 200 songs on their playlist. Only 5 years ago it was down to around 40 or 50. Who’s going to listen to a station that plays 25 or 30 different tunes a day? That’s why I stopped listening to conventional radio.
Need I say again that album sales dropped 70% over the last decade? Digital revenues are not going to make up for those losses, because most of the people buy only digital singles.
January 25th, 2010 at 10:31 pm
Sounds like the movie industry, after announcing the biggest profits they’ve ever had,with balls like Hogzilla, cried about piracy stating that they could have made even MORE billions. To both I say, cry me a fucking river.