Legal US Music Downloads Beat CD Single Sales

Kelly McNeill writes "I've received a lot of feedback from osViews readers (my site) asking about the music download survey that we've been conducting over the past few weeks, saying that osViews readership must be skewed in one particular direction to get the results we did. The primary reason given is not necessarily the fact that iTunes has significantly surpassed its competitors, but that the results show legal digital downloads surpassing even CD sales. I must admit that even I thought this a was a bit peculiar, but now, according to a BBC World news report, it seems the survey is correct. Digital downloads have surpassed even physical CD sales!" Update: 11/04 23:35 GMT by S : The BBC story refers to CD single sales, so Mr.McNeill maybe not be quite as right as he thinks, sadly.

Comments

very misleading headline

[jcruelty]

they're not talking about all cd sales, just cd singles vs online singles. DUH! hardly anybody buys cd singles anymore. it says nothing about people buying full cds vs online albums.

Re:very misleading headline

[helix400]

Especially for someone who was so skeptical, yet found an article that "proved" his point. I guess he didn't bother to read even 4 paragraphs down to find these choice quote:

"Some 7.7 million tracks were bought and downloaded since the end of June - compared with four million CD singles sold, Billboard magazine reported. But some say online and CD single sales cannot be compared because so few singles are now released on CD."

Just Singles

[pavon]

For the lazy, non-RTFA'ers, this is only compared to CD singles, not CD sales in general. So not that surprizing seeing as how small a market that is and how expensive singles are.

Post is misleading

[StickMang]

Woah guys, this is a bit incorrect. The survey was talking about CD singles, not overall CD sales. The article you posted is a bit misleading.
Also, the most popular CD single still beat the most popular digital single.

Same thing occured to the pr0n industry

[Anonymous Coward]

A saw an article a while ago that noted sales of online porn (mostly through adult websites) surpassed that of porn sold through traditional venues (e.g. adult video & books sellers). And that was a few years ago. The porn industry adapted to the new technology seemlessly, while making more money than ever.

Regardless of your opinions of the porn industry (which often does things as shady as the RIAA), at least they know an opportunity when they see it. The RIAA refuses to get a new business model, unless you consider suing your customers into a submission a business model.

Re:Typical /. response:

[jc42]

Actually, most artists are giving you their work for free. All that money you pay goes to the distributors; none of it reaches the artists.

Recording industry contracts pretty much guarantee that the artist gets nothing (and in fact usually ends up in debt) until at least 1.5 million CDs are sold. For new groups, the crossover point is often much higher, and is hardly ever reached.

But this is hardly news in this forum. Anyone reading /. for more than a month or so should have seen the data by now.