Legal Music to Go Extinct

According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry the Internet is killing the music recording industry with its illegal product distribution. The organization represents the entire world music records sector and monitors the total revenues generated by the largest, most famous recording studios all over the world.

If we take a look at the overall revenue of the entire sector over the year of 2010, we’ll see a noticeable 6% drop of official music sales (from 17 to 16 billion dollars). All of this is happening because of the never-ending music pilferage all over the web. Although the level of actual digital sales of music has increased by 7% (from 4.3 to 4.6 billion dollars), the tendency for illegal music distribution is intensifying.

The problem is critical, for, as consumers, we are experiencing the final effect of the money redistribution. For instance, the investments into the world music industry are naturally dropping, which results in the actual 75% decrease of the portion of new artists when considering the most popular albums sold worldwide.

The horrible part is the fact that 95% of the world’s music downloads are illegal, which leaves less money for recording studios and diminishes all the remaining chances for the music supply to vary.

The essential issue in this situation is the fact that digital music sales are not really applied in the Eastern Europe whatsoever. Digitally music is actually purchased within mobile applications only, and the business hasn’t really been established yet. The content is very poor, mobile operators do not offer a decent variety of downloadable music files, perhaps because they see no point in investing either.

The thing is – it is quite hard to turn the entire system of music consumption in Eastern Europe upside down. Maybe, if app developers of different mobile network providers came up with quick, efficient, cost-effective music search engines and were able to challenge illegal music giveaway websites with all kinds of benefits and bonuses, or maybe download speed advantages, - people would switch to the legal acquisition?

There always has to be a point, and while music sellers offer higher bitrates and exclusive time frames when it comes to newly released products, they should probably add more or less speedy downloads to benefit from. Consumers always go for cheaper offers, other things being equal, and surely, choose “free” over “paid but diligent”.