In our cover feature, we pick through the IFPI recorded music numbers for 2013. After the excitement of, albeit minuscule, growth in 2012 (after over 12 years of steady decline), the global business took a dip last year. Much of the blame was placed on the huge slump in the Japanese market, but download revenues also fell for the first time, suggesting that, a decade on from iTunes, the format is running out of road. While streaming was the golden child and continued to roar forward ($1bn in revenues and 28m paying subscribers last year), it is simply just not mature enough yet to shoulder both the continued decline in CD revenues as well as any drops in the download market.
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