Digital Comes To Aid Of Music’s Bottom Line

Billboard.com reports that in what some are calling a "rebound year for the music business, emerging digital formats are providing a much-needed financial boost. Music-related products for PCs and mobile phones are on pace to deliver as much as $500 million in combined revenue in the United States for 2004, according to Nielsen SoundScan figures and analysts’ projections. That’s three times better than 2003 and perhaps the strongest evidence yet of digital distribution’s growing role in the fortunes of the music business. Six years after Napster made peer-to-peer piracy a mainstream activity, file swappers were reined in during the last 12 months, and sales of a la carte downloads, subscription services and ringtones bloomed…"

"For the piracy-ravaged recording industry — whose success has been hitched to the health of the CD since cassette sales began their dramatic decline in 1997 — the emergence of digital music as a viable second format is a welcome shot in the arm. In what amounted to year two of the mainstream digital music business, big brands, big phone companies, big anti-piracy efforts and portable players with big storage capacities drove consumer’s adoption of products and services, technology executives and analysts say."

Perhaps now the final music industry executives not fulling embracing the digital frontier will change their tune; but it sill remains to be seen whether or not the film industry learn from music’s mistakes.