Friday 17 April 2015

IFPI Digital Report 2015: The highlights

It's that time of year again: the annual digital music report from IFPI. You can download it in full here.

It's another positive entry, with discussion on digital piracy limited in comparison with reports from recent years.

In it, search engines such as Google are once more singled out as having to do more to minimise the traffic of searches to illegal content. Additionally, other companies are also singled out as playing a critical role in encouraging digital piracy. For example, the report notes how much pirated content is now sourced via mobile apps and that these apps are downloaded from legitimate sources such as Apple.

Also, companies such as British Airways, Samsung, and PayPal advertise on illegal websites hosting copyrighted content.

In a nutshell, consumers are receiving mixed signals.

Elsewhere, the report focuses on the continued rise of streaming, though acknowledges that the majority of digital music revenues come from downloads. There are now over 400 digital music services worldwide.

Interestingly, the top-selling album of the year (by some margin) was the OST to the Disney film 'Frozen'. As discussed elsewhere on this blog, film soundtracks have been in decline for some time, more than conventional albums, so it's a curious, but not unexplainable one when you think about who the Frozen album was intended for, and who is likely to buy it for them.

Anyhow, get on over to the IFPI website yourself and have a look. It's well put together and very accessible.

Tweeps @musicpiracyblog

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