Global Recorded Music Sales Down

Global music retail revenues fell about 2 percent last year. In 2004 they remained flat at $33.6 billion, punctuating a four-year slide. The drop in overall sales came “despite a threefold increase in digital music revenue to $1.1 billion from $380 million, while illegal file-sharing volumes changed little. The new downturn, based on data from three-quarters of the global market, underlined major challenges facing record companies…”