IFPI claims 95% of music downloads are still illegal

Music industry body the IFPI claims that more than 40 billion songs were illegally downloaded in 2008 – 95% of all music downloads.The figures have just been revealed in its annual IFPI Digital Music Report, which presents them as further proof that ISPs should be co-operating more closely with the music industry to clamp down on piracy. That 40 billion figure is based on collating separate studies from 16 countries over a three-year period, apparently, with France and Spain singled out as being affected particularly badly by online piracy.How about the positive side? Well, digital music generated $3.7 billion of trade revenues in 2008, up 25% year-on-year. The problem is that this growth is pretty poor, given the continued decline in physical revenues – digital's share of overall recorded sales has risen, but only from 15% to 20% from 2007 to 2008.It's all very well to trumpet the fact that more than 1.4 billion legal single-tracks were downloaded in 2008, as the IFPI does, but if they cost 79 cents each and are eating into the market share of physical albums, it's clear the transition from physical to digital is still proving thorny. Still, Lil Wayne is doing well out [...]