A new research report from the NPD Group says that digital music acquisition in the US rose by 6% last year, which sounds good, but they also say that the amount of digital music acquired from legit sources fell from 48% to 42%, meaning overall digital music spending was down 10%. Which don't sound good. Certainly not if you're a content owner. Basically NPD are saying illegal file sharing is alive and well. What's more, CD sales continued to decline, with one million Americans stopping buying CDs, and only 38% of teens buying physical music product, down from 48% the previous year. Not good.
On the upside, Juniper Research are predicting good things for the mobile music sector, predicting that the mobile music market will grow to more than $17.5 billion by 2012. And much of that growth will come from mobile downloads and subscription music services rather than ringtones - ie services that are potentially more profitable for the record labels. So, label types, hold on to that I guess.