The Legitimate Digital Music Market Takes Off

SEE ALSO

Tracks available

There are at least 1 million tracks or 80,000 albums now available on some online music services, bringing the equivalent of a Megastore into the home.
There are at least 450,000 tracks on any one service, across Europe.

Sites

There are more than 150 online music sites in Europe and over 230 globally (March 2005). The cross-industry www.pro-music.org site now features a comprehensive worldwide directory of legitimate online services.
Legal download services are present in 23 countries in Europe.
Some 13 services in Europe have a presence in two or more markets.
As well as the big pan-European players a variety of specialised services are also appearing, for example independent label content only.
Many country-specific services have launched in 2005 worldwide, following the big name brand launches in 2004.

Research

IFPI research:

The number of people using legal sources (either a legal download service or an artist or band website) is fast approaching those using P2P (IFPI research, Dec 2004). For those downloading music, 44% had used an illegal P2P service in the previous month. One in five (22%) had downloaded from either a legal online service such as iTunes or Napster, and a further 22% had used an artist or band website.
However actual download volumes from legal sources are still very low compared with unauthorised sources.

Sales

Over 200 million tracks were downloaded (including album tracks) in 2004 in the US, UK, Germany and France combined - up tenfold on the previous year. Single Track Downloads (million)
In the first quarter of 2005, the UK sold 4.5 million single track downloads, 17 times that in Q1 2004.
In the US, the figure for the first quarter of 2005 was 76.2 million, up around 200% from Q1 2004. The US also saw over 3 million album downloads sold in Q1 2005.
Globally there are now 1.7 million subscribers to music subscription services (including Napster, Rhapsody, MusicNet, Musicmatch, Emusic)

2005 launches of online music sites

With major brand name launches in 2004, many smaller or country specific services have launched in 2005.

Major Existing Services