Taking on technology: imagine what might have happened had the record companies embraced digital distribution.(Headliners)

Video Business,  January, 2005  by Sweeting, Paul

Tags: CD, DVD, IFPI, record company

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Apparently you can compete with free after all. Last week, the International Federation of Phonographic Industries (IFPI) released a report documenting a nine-fold increase in the number of licensed music downloads sold worldwide last year compared to 2003. Some 200 million tracks were downloaded from legal sites in 2004 (142 million in the U.S.), compared to 20 million in 2003.

Those downloads were worth about $330 million to record companies, according to analysts at Jupiter Research, a figure expected to double in 2005. Authorized downloads could represent as ...

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