The music industry is surveying the wreckage of another dismal six months as global data show music sales tumbled 10.9 per cent, piling more pressure on music companies to do deals to survive.
Despite big hits from pop queen Christina Aguilera and rapper 50 Cent, Internet downloading and CD-burning continued to ravage the industry, dragging music sales down to $12.7 billion in the first half of this year, a leading industry body said today.
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry said in its interim report that global recorded music sales fell 10.9 per cent in value terms and 10.7 per cent in unit terms, outstripping a 7.2 per cent fall in 2002.
Global sales of CDs, which make up almost 90 per cent of total sales, fell 11.7 per cent in the first six months. However, the IFPI said it expected a stronger second half to limit the full-year decline to between seven and eight per cent.
"It's a very difficult landscape to fight back against but we are. We have gone through the worst period and we have enough positive signs about how online business models can go forward," said IFPI chairman Mr Jay Berman.
Mr Berman said the US, Japan, France and Germany - the world's biggest music markets - showed dramatic declines.
There have been bright spots however, the IFPI said. A string of hits in a traditionally thin release period included Christina Aguilera's Stripped, 50 Cent's Get Rich or Die Tryin, Coldplay's A Rush of Blood to the Head, Celine Dion's One Heartand Avril Lavigne's Let Go.