By Mike Collett-White
LONDON (Reuters) – Digital song revenues rose 8 percent in 2011 to $5.2 billion, though it was not adequate to forestall another annual decrease in a altogether marketplace to $16.2 billion from $16.7 billion in 2010.
Figures expelled on Monday by record attention physique a International Federation of a Phonographic Industry (IFPI) reliable expectations that a downward trend that began in a late 1990s continued final year.
The good news was that a 2011 decrease of around 3 percent was smaller than a 8 percent dump in 2010, and there were signs that a attention was finally commencement to get on tip of a prevalent online robbery it blames for a woes.
Record tag bosses were carefully confident that song revenues would finally lapse to expansion in 2013, a perspective not common by everybody in a business.
“The destiny is looking intensely bright. Has a attention incited a corner? I’m really some-more certain now than I’ve ever been,” pronounced Rob Wells, boss of tellurian digital business during Universal Music Group, a world’s biggest label.
“I consider 2013 is substantially a protected bet,” he told an IFPI lecture in London. “However, notwithstanding all a good news, still good bid needs to be put on a robbery problem that still exists.”
Edgar Berger, boss and CEO International during Sony Music Entertainment, added: “I consider a sourroundings is changing agreeably and we’re going from headwind to tailwind.”
Frances Moore, arch executive of a IFPI, pronounced vital authorised digital song services widespread dramatically final year to 58 countries from 23 in 2010.
She welcomed a attainment of new models for accessing music, including cloud-based services like iTunes Match, and pronounced a series of subscribers to sites like Spotify and Deezer had jumped to 13.4 million from 8.2 million in 2010.
But notwithstanding signs that governments were holding a emanate of robbery some-more seriously, it continued to criticise a recording industry’s efforts to lapse to growth.
The IFPI estimated that 28 percent of internet users accessed unapproved services on a monthly basis.
Wells pronounced piracy’s stress could not be played down.
“Spain, that should be a powerhouse of repertoire for Latin America and a U.S. Latin market, is effectively a passed market,” he said. “Yet in South Korea, where we have new anti-piracy laws, a marketplace is surging and now swelling a repertoire distant over a possess borders.”
“PIRATE” BATTLES
The IFPI news came only days after a U.S. supervision close down a Megaupload.com calm pity website, a latest push in a conflict opposite a robbery of cinema and music.
Soon after, FileSonic, another website providing online information storage, infirm a file-sharing services.
The film and song industries wish Congress to moment down on Internet robbery and calm theft, though vital Internet companies including Google and Facebook have complained that stream drafts of a legislation would lead to censorship.
A priority for 2012, a IFPI’s Moore said, would be to inspire hunt engines like Google to do some-more to prioritize authorised song sites and assistance forestall a appropriation of bootleg sites by advertising.
In 2011, a IFPI estimated that 3.6 billion downloads were purchased globally, mixing singles and manuscript downloads, an boost of 17 percent.
The many renouned digital singular final year was Bruno Mars’ “Just a Way You Are” with 12.5 million downloads.
Industry executives interviewed by a IFPI pronounced they saw expansion intensity in both categorical models of online song services — “ownership” and “access” — and softened record and broadband invasion should also help.
There were enlivening signs for a manuscript format, too, with digital manuscript volumes surging 24 percent in 2011 and defying predictions that a download age would spell a finish of a LP as listeners cherry picked their favorite singles.
Overall a song marketplace has shrunk each year given 2004, notwithstanding digital revenues rising.
In 2004, when digital sales initial purebred in IFPI statistics, a altogether song attention was value $24.3 billion, according to a latest practiced figures.
Other sectors, like edition and movies, are endangered that a pain a recording attention has left by for a best partial of a decade awaits them in a future.
Digital sales accounted for 32 percent of tellurian song revenues in 2011, compared with 5 percent for newspapers, 4 percent for books and only one percent for films.
(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, modifying by Paul Casciato)
