Two stories from the Washington Post today demonstrate yet again the extent to which digital music players in general, and the iPod specifically, are remaking the music industry.
First, an international trade group reports that online sales of digital music doubled in 2006 to about $ 2 billion:
LONDON — Global online music sales nearly doubled in 2006 to about $2 billion, or 10 percent of all sales, but failed to compensate for an overall decline in sales of CDs, the global music industry trade body said Wednesday.
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, or the IFPI, also said it would move to sue Internet service providers if they continued to allow identified digital music pirates _ a costly scourge of the industry _ to use their networks.
“We don’t have the holy grail of digital (online) offsetting the decline of CDs as yet,” IFPI Chairman John Kennedy said in London after the release of the group’s 2007 Digital Music Report. Kennedy said overall music sales fell approximately 3 percent in 2006.
The IFPI said early last year that it expected online sales to grow enough to compensate globally for the declines that the industry has recorded over the past five years due to illegal file-sharing, piracy and competition from new media.
However, the report showed that growth in online sales has slowed compared with 2005, when sales nearly tripled to $1.1 billion from $380 million in 2004.
Kennedy said he now hoped online sales would compensate for the decline of CDs sometime this year.
Well, one think you can do to help with that is tell your members to stop selling crappy music.
Second, Apple reported this afternoon that it shipped a record 21 million iPods during the 4th Quarter of 2006:
Apple Inc. said it sold a record number of iPods in the last three months of 2006 — a holiday-season feat that boosted the California company’s quarterly revenue by 78 percent.
Apple said it earned a record $1 billion ($1.14 a share) in its fiscal first quarter, up from $565 million (65 cents) a year earlier, beating Wall Street analysts’ estimates. Sales jumped 24 percent to a record $7.12 billion, Apple said.
The strong results come a week after Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs disclosed that the company has created an iPod smart phone — a device that will surf the Internet, handle e-mails and play music and video. And they come amid a scandal at Apple over its backdating of stock options.
Apple reported today that it shipped 21 million iPods during the quarter, 50 percent more than in the same quarter a year ago.
One can only assume these numbers will continue to grow as digital music takes over.
