Two Music Related Surveys
FROM DITIGITAL MEDIA WIREo Report: U.S. Music Album
Sales Up 6.9% in First Half of 2004
New York — The U.S. music industry rebounded in the first half of 2004, with album sales of 305.7 million units up 6.9% from the 285.9 million units sold in the first half of 2003, Billboard reported, citing Nielsen SoundScan data. Universal was ranked the top distributor, with 27.1% market share, while independent labels collectively accounted for 17.5% of the market and BMG leapt over Warner to claim third place with 16.4%, bettering Warner’s 14.6% share. Rounding out the distributors were Sony (12.8%) and EMI (10.7%).
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http://www.soundscan.com
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Report: For First Time, Music Not Most Popular File Download
Paris — For the first time, video and other non-audio files have become more popular on file-sharing networks than music, the Associated Press reported, citing a study of 30 countries’ downloading habits conducted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The report, which does not differentiate between legal and illegitimate downloads, found that music accounted for 48.6% of shared files in 2003, down from 62.5% in 2002, while video files increased from 25.2% to 27% of all downloading traffic. The “other files” category, which includes software and pornography, almost doubled in size and now accounts for nearly 25% of all downloads. The OECD report found that video accounted for 23.7% of U.S. Kazaa users’ files, compared with 35.4% among German users; higher video file percentages were also reported in Belgium, England, Finland, France, Norway and Poland.
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