USA: paid downloads continue to increase

Paid downloads have now become so popular in the USA that they are on the point of replacing CDs.

The results of a study by NPD Group confirm the trend imposed by the music industry: the sale of digital music is continually increasing market share at the expense of CD sales. According to an analysis by Russ Crupnick, "with digital music sales growing at 15 to 20 percent, and CDs falling by an equal proportion, digital music sales will nearly equal CD sales by the end of 2010".

iTunes is still dominating

Steve Jobs announced the disappearance of the CD a long time ago. And the facts are bearing him out. What’s more, Apple's digital sales platform has done a lot of the work.

With almost 70% market share of online sales and 25% of total music sales, iTunes is still at the top of the music market in the United States. AmazonMP3 has not yet achieved equivalent sales as Amazon CDs, with only 8% of the market share.

Online digital sales: a lower sales price

The good news for the American market is that sales of digital music have continued to rise at the beginning of 2009. Online music is now attracting a larger audience than simply pirates and other free downloaders.

Download sales were up from 20% in the first half of 2007 to 35% for the same period in 2009. Turnover for digital music was up by 16% in 2008 in the United States. With the cost of titles at under a dollar per unit, the system set up by Apple and cloned by others obviously has price arguments in its favour. It remains to be seen if record companies and artists will make enough to make it worth their while. Here, in spite of the imminent death of CDs, the debate is still on.