The rise and rise of music downloads
It’s hard to imagine a time when music downloads were a novelty, a new fangled way of buying music favoured only by technophiles and ‘early adopters’. However, it was only towards the latter end of the last decade that downloads joined the mainstream and became an accepted sales format for chart positioning.
In September 2004 the UK launched its official download chart and a mere four months later music downloads were outselling physical singles in CD or vinyl format for the first time in UK music history. The US was not far behind in recognising the validity of music downloads in official sales figures and in February 2005 they were included for the first time in the Billboard Hot 100.
Of course, as with most success stories there is always a flip side and in the case of the music industry the flip side has been particularly grim. As music lovers have ditched CDs and vinyl in favour of the MP3, record labels and the artists they represent have suffered massive financial losses. The rise of broadband has meant that music downloads are accessible to a huge percentage of the population and this, coupled with an increase in illegal download sites has meant that there is always a way of acquiring your favourite track without actually paying for it.
Global music sales have fallen year on year for the past ten years as a direct result of music downloads, and music industry bodies have so far failed in their efforts to persuade people to respect copyright laws and pay for their music. Despite a number of successful legal cases being brought against both file sharing sites and the people who download music from them, the juggernaut of illegal music downloads continues to roll on.
