Forum Musique-Libre

This statistic is from last year, but still very informative. I think this year the number is down again. Also, the peak sale coincide with peak of napster. They can't blame napster for sure.

http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/2004/12/

Nielsen SoundScan reported that, as of last Sunday, unit sales reached 665.5 million for 2004. That represents a modest 1.4% increase over the same period 2003. The industry has one more week of sales left before getting a final tally for the year, the WSJ reported.

This increase reflects, more than anything the industry has done, a generally improving economy, along with a few breakout CDs. Much of the industry, however, remains mird in a creative drought of sorts.

Further, the music industry is not competing well with other digital entertainment media. A survey by the Stanford Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society (reported yesterday in the NYT) noted how the internet was cutting Into TV viewing.

interesting indeed.
it's a matter of fact the industry can't blame on p2p : one more study in 2004 also, by Jupiter Research, "Consumer Digital Media, Jupiter Research Vision Report", april 2004, shows that p2p users who download on a regular basis buy 4 times more music than other consumers, ratio remaining true even if going slightly down these last years...
(source : Jupiter Resarch, quoted by André Nicolas (head of french Observatoire de la Musique) study : "Les marchés numériques de la musique 2005").

This is an even more interesting statistic. The collapse of major record company top 100 album. (5 yearly statistic)

http://www.thelongtail.com/the_long_tai ... _the_.html