For All That Downloading, Album Sales Are Up In The UK

from the well,-look-at-that... dept

There was lots of hype last week about how ringtones might outsell music singles in the UK this year. The music industry, while happy about the ringtone sales, used it as an example to show how music downloading was killing the singles market (if you hadn't noticed, the music industry is willing to take anything and blame downloading on the death of the music industry - I'm almost surprised we haven't yet heard of a connection between last week's blackout and music downloads, and the resulting death of the music industry). However, lost in the commotion was one interesting tidbit: album sales in the UK are up. While the music industry insists this is not possible, it seems that two things have happened: more people are downloading music and discovering new artists and the price of CDs have fallen. That combination means that many more CDs are being bought (though, at lower prices). Of course, the music industry will still whine that dollar amounts are lower, or that this is a temporary blip - but once again, it shows that they're so set in their beliefs that they're unwilling to look at the actual data and realize there are opportunities in music sharing, rather than threats.

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