Music downloads becomes a way of life - the end of the CD is nigh

The 47th annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles marks an interesting period in the history of recorded music as an abundance of news and research indicates we are moving beyond the media stage to the delivery stage and the process is maturing. The most telling news was that legal digital music downloads are gaining in popularity. According to an Ipsos-Insight study about 47 percent of Americans age 12 or older who downloaded music during December 2004 paid a fee - more than double the percentage (22%) of just twelve months ago.

The study showed that although users between the ages of 25 and 54 are most likely to pay to download music, more than half of respondents between the ages of 12 and 17 said they have paid for music. For the first time the proportion of the U.S. population engaged in fee-based downloading (11 percent) is about the same as the percentage engaged in file sharing.

Last week also saw the announcement by Billboard, the most influential music chart in the world, that it would begin including digital music downloads in the official Billboard U.S. singles chart. Sales of music downloads had previously been assigned a separate download chart, will now be incorporated into Billboard's Hot 100 chart. The chart will be based upon digital sales, sales of physical singles and airplay information. The UK singles chart is expected to incorporate download sales later this year

Billboard could obviously ignore the digital download culture no longer, particularly when Apple's online iTunes Music Stores have now sold more than 250 million songs and is nowselling 1.25 million songs per day, putting the annual rate at almost half a billion songs a year.

Also making digital music news this week was that the US mobile phone ringtone market looks to be assuming gigantic proportions - though much smaller by comparison to markets in Asia and Europe, U.S. ringtone's still clocked up US$245 million last year and this figure is expected to double in 2005.

There's a great article on the subject entitled "10 Million iPods, Previewing the CD's End" by the Washington Post's Sean Daly, though the last word on the subject should go to one of the postings on Slashdot today.

HenryV wrote: You know, when I bought groceries the other day, I went back to the store to tell the store manager that it wasn't a cash transaction that had occured at all, but in fact I had actually entered into a contract with him. He had implicitly agreed to this contract by allowing his cashier to take my money. He was pretty steamed about it all, but I just had my attack lawyers rope him up while I appropriated his car, home, and wife, as the terms of our implicit contract unambigously state are now mine.