A new report in Mintel - Consumer attitudes to pricing in media and music has identified that growth of single sales and overall decline in album sales go hand in hand, and constitute a cultural shift (amongst younger music listeners in particular) away from the ‘album’ concept towards a ‘cherry-picking’ approach. However, it remains to be seen to what extent rising digital album sales can slow or even reverse the decline of the album.
As the market for digital music takes off, consumers have an ever increasing array of online suppliers to choose from and a growing diversity of ways to access music.
According to the IFPI , the number of licensed music services available on the internet has grown from less than 50 in 2003 to around 400 in 2009.
The dominance of iTunes is being challenged by other à la carte download services such as Amazon, Tesco and 7Digital (half of which was bought by HMV in September 2009). More competition is helping to lead to more competitive and more flexible pricing.
A guide to legal downloading is availalable from the Guardian website http://arts.guardian.co.uk/netmusic/page/0,,1127237,00.html
More information on this topic is available from Mintel (access online via infolinx) and the IFPI Industry in Numbers 2010 (available in teh library
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