The Legitimate Digital Music Market Takes Off

November 15, 2005

Sales

• Single track downloads in the US, the UK, Germany and France rose to 180 million in the first half of 2005 compared to 157 million for the whole of 2004. This is more than three times the 57 million downloads of the first half of 2004.
  
  
• In the US year to date digital album sales to end October 2005 reached 10.9 million, up 226% on 2004. Single track downloads have sold 251.3 million, up 160.3%.
  
  
• In UK single track downloads in the nine months of 2005 were at 16.9 million, up from 2.7 million in the same period of 2004 (BPI).
  
  
• Global subscriptions to legal online services reached 2.4 million by September 2005, up from 1.5 million subscriptions estimated in IFPI's Digital Music Report in January.

Tracks available

• There are at least 2 million tracks or 165,000 albums now available on some online music services.
  
  
• There are at least 500,000 tracks on any one service, across Europe.

Sites

• There are more than 190 online music sites in Europe and over 325 globally. 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 18 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.
  
  
• The expansion of services in Europe is being driven by a mix of major players and independent services. Loudeye - owners of OD2 - power a variety of services in over 20 countries and iTunes has a presence in 17 European markets.
  
  
• Apple iTunes sold its 500 millionth song on July 18th 2005