So What Was All That Whining About?

Despite all the music industry’s moaning about the coming apocalypse of illegal downloading, CD sales in the U.S. rose by 2.3% in 2004, and continue to dominate the music-buying marketplace, accounting for 98% of all music sales. UK sales were up 3%, and set an all-time record for albums sold. Legal downloading from sites such as Apple’s iTunes, meanwhile, also skyrocketed in 2004, ending the year with an average of 6.7 million tracks downloaded each week, up from 300,000 per week in 2003.