The diminishing music sales a myth

Music sales in millions USD, all media and distribution formats. The figures only represents the major record companies. No independent record labels are represented. Independent record labels account for 12.8 percent of market share. Among the four major recording companies, Universal Music Group lead with a market share of 31.7 percent. Sony BMG Music Entertainment is second with 26.3 percent market share, followed by Warner Music Group's 19.3 percent and Britain's EMI Music's 10 percent.

Don’t you ever wondered if the music publishing industry claims are right? That the claims about music sales going down drastically due to piracy are correct? I made some data mining in the RIAA database.

Some findings:

Between 1995 and 2005 the sales of CDs increased with 41 percent. The losers are not surprisingly CD Singles, Cassettes and LP/EP. The winners are digitally distributed music and ring tones for cell phones.

The digitally distributed music was 4,7 percent of the total music sales. If you combine all forms of media and distributions you end up with no decrease at all.

I strongly doubt that the reason for diminishing CD sales is due to piracy. Online music sales often come at the expense of more profitable album sales as music fans often pick a few favorite songs online instead of purchasing a whole album. It’s a new business model.