The music market is disappearing as a phenomenon

The latest statistics of the NPD Group analytical company contains one contradiction, which clearly catches the eye. Over the past year, the number of buyers of music CDs in the United States has decreased by 17 million people, and buyers of digital music have increased by only 8 million people, 4 million of them among those who continue to be listed in the first category. This simple statistic raises one question: where did 13 million Americans go, who stopped buying music?

Analysts cannot answer this question (they only mention the recession as a reason), although the answer suggests itself - people are gradually finding sources of free music, of which there are a huge amount of people on the Internet. This is not only torrents, but also legal Internet radio, YouTube with a huge number of music videos, social networks with the ability to share files and other services. For example, the popularity of Pandora Internet radio doubled last year and now amounts to as much as 18% of the entire US Internet audience, and 19% of users receive music from social networks.

However, the lion's share of "lost" users probably go into what is traditionally called "piracy." Last year, only 58% of Internet users bought music on the Net or on CDs, whereas a year earlier their share was 65%. If the number of buyers falls even more, then the music industry will have to look for new business models. Actually, the transformation of the market has already begun.