AfterDawn: News

IFPI seeks the holy grail through digital music

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) released a statement that online music sales have doubled in profit this past year, reaching an astounding $2billion (£1billion) and roughly 10% in overall sales. This may be good news to some, but the IFPI believes that illegal file sharing of these music files has not allowed them to reach the "holy grail" of music sales since CD sales have fallen off the map.

The IFPI 2007 digital music report showed that 795 million digital songs were downloaded legally last year, up by 89% from 2005, accross some 500 legitimate download services.



The IFPI believes that online music sales could become a rich quarter of the worldwide market in sales by 2010. With that they have stated that they would like to see more of a crackdown on illegal file sharing.

IFPI chairman John Kennedy said, "The pace of transformation in our industry is breathtaking, but at the moment the holy grail is evading us. I would like to be announcing that a fall in CD sales is being compensated for by an equal or greater increase in online and mobile revenues. But that is not yet happening on a global basis."

The IFPI said some 30,000 class action lawsuits against file-sharers has helped give some edge to their war on piracy, but have urged ISPs to assist them by now allowing such file sharing services to be setup on their servers.

Source:
BBC

Written by: Dave Horvath @ 18 Jan 2007 5:42

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• 12 comments

• ZippyDSM

  They seem to be missing the point,No every file shared means a file sold,to think they would be raking in money right now f they had a setup like All of mp3.com,a cheap and simple to the point site,non of this 2$ a song BS.

  18.1.2007 05:49 #1

• solarf

  exactly, if they provided a service like that it would be great. $2 for a song is just stupid.

  18.1.2007 06:36 #2

• Mr-Movies

  Actually they are hitting the points they wish to stand out regardless of the fact they are missing the big picture.
  
  Point #1 - What they are doing is working.
  Point #2 - Piracy is their only problem.
  
  I really don't understand the downloading music thing, but then I prefer quality and would much rather buy the CD/DVD and rip it the way I want, at the highest possible VBR like MLP or WMA Lossless.
  

  18.1.2007 07:45 #3

• chickenR

  Never happy are they?
  
  Personally, I'd never pay to download music/movies. I'd choose buying the actual CD/DVD every time. Then I can choose what to do with it. Plus you get the nice booklets and artwork with CDs. Stopped getting booklets with most DVDs now. :|

  18.1.2007 09:11 #4

• oofRome

  I agree with a lot of what's already been said:
  
  If the cost of legal music downloads were lower, than consumers would have more incentive to download them.

  18.1.2007 09:14 #5

• JackFunk

  There's a great company out there with a HUGE online music catalogue of LEGAL music: Mercora Inc. They are a leading social radio network, and they about to get an award for their onsite search engine. Awesome stuff; you should check it out.

  18.1.2007 10:20 #6

• limelight

  Falling CD sales?
  
  HA! Have they listened to the garbage on the radio nowadays?
  
  Nuff' said.

  18.1.2007 15:52 #7

• ZippyDSM

  The media mafia refuses to adapt and make money legitimately thus they sue and charge OTT prices.

  18.1.2007 20:06 #8

• BludRayne

  Sales up a whopping 89% and they're still bitching!

  19.1.2007 12:03 #9

• borhan9

  You know what they are missing out on is that people yes do buy the mp3 track off the online stores but those users put it in p2p sites and torrent sites for others to use. Go figure :P

  19.1.2007 20:25 #10

• ZippyDSM

  They are sad their holy grail turns out to by a rusty tin cup because they inflated online prices to much and curse Allof because they managed to make money and sale music cheap at the same time.

  21.1.2007 10:35 #11

• xhardc0re

  If they would lower the EFFING price of the songs (99cents? Try 20-50 cents) then it would encourage ppl to d/l instead of buying from the store. As for their comments about the ISPs, who cares about setting up a file sharing service? Use MUTE (google that) & give you files a different name then what they're looking for. For instance, name a song Em1nem instead of Eminem or add a zero in place of an O. There are different methods to make their searches for songs a hella lot more difficult.
  In other world news, I counted how many times me and my GF went out to the movies last year. Three times. Yep, Hollywood=teh suck. When they get some GOOD movies, we will spend $$$ to go see them. Until that time comes...noooo.

  27.1.2007 22:56 #12