Thursday, January 19, 2006

Digital music sales pass $1bn in 2005

Sales of legally downloaded digital music passed the $1bn mark last year thanks to more legitimate online music stores and mobile phone ringtones, according to the music industry’s leading trade body.

And it looks like most of these sales came from new sunscribers, rather than people who used to use illegal file-sharing sites. At least useage of illegal sites remained static last year. In the UK and Germany legal sales overtook illegal sharing.

Now digital sales account for 6% of total music sales and continue to grow. Apple's iTunes of course has the largest slice of the cake with some people estimating that they control 75% of the market for digital music sales in the US.

But, mobile music sales continue to take a large slice of the pie. In Japan mobile accounts for 96% of digital music sales. And 2006 will see mobile phone operators and handset makers swamp the market with music enabled phones and new mobile services.

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