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Old 07-15-2013, 09:37 AM   #34 (permalink)
Gavin B.
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The major labels are misleading the public when they say music sales are down. Yes... sales of physical albums was only 198 million albums which is a 12% decline from the previous year.

What record labels fail to include in the sales information is digital sales are at 118 million albums a 14% increase from the previous year.

2012 set a new record for music purchases with over 1.65 Billion album units sold! Why are record labels complaining about digital piracy when album sales are off the charts?

I once said that music piracy would actually increase the sales of legally purchased albums and that's turned out to be true. 1995 was the best year for album sales prior to the rise of Napster and pirated music. That year 722 million albums were sold... In 2012 it's at 1.65 billion, that's 70 million more units that the record breaking year of 1995. In fact album sales have risen every year since the advent of Napster and other file trading services.

The biggest complaint of the records companies is the retail price of a digital album is $9.99 which is significantly less that the $17.99 list price for a cd in the pre-digital download era. But those cheaper prices have stimulated album sales and digital piracy should be of very minor concern to record companies.
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