Piracy figures continue to increase

The BPI, in its annual handbook, has put the cost of illegal CDs to the industry at more than £27m. And it reckons official figures represent only "a small proportion" of the actual revenue lost to the industry. As previously reported, the rising availability in CD duplication kit means ‘old fashioned’ piracy (ie the sale of counterfeit CDs) is a much bigger immediate threat to the music industry than Napster-style downloading, outside the US especially. About 4.3 million counterfeit CDs are thought to have been created in 2001. The report says: "retailers, distributors, artists, composers, publishers and record companies all lose out when customers are sold a pirate copy rather than a legitimate recording." The rise in piracy is blamed for a worldwide decline in record sales, although UK sales actually rose by 5%, pretty much the percentage sales fell by elsewhere.