Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Music Group International digitizing 100,000 recordings

The ongoing changes in music - its all about the downloads -

Universal Music Group International (UMG.XX), the world's largest music company by market share, Wednesday said it was digitizing 100,000 previously deleted European recordings in order to make them available over the Internet.
Universal will take recordings from what it claims is the music industry's largest archive, including music from Marianne Faithfull, Fairport Convention, Nirvana and Jacques Brel.
The global music industry has been hit over the past five years by illegal downloads over the Internet but sales of legal digital downloads in 2005 showed huge growth in the U.K. and U.S.
The global music trade body, IFPI, reported last October that the value of digital download sales have now overtaken the value of the global singles market.
Global sales of recorded music fell 1.9% in the first half of 2005, the latest period for which figures are available, while physical music sales fell 6.3% over the period, however digital music sales tripled over the period to 6% of total record industry sales.
full story: http://www.thebusinessonline.co.uk/DJStory.aspx?DJStoryID=20060118DN005920

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