Reports of the music industry's death greatly exagerrated

Conventional wisdom has been that Internet music file sharing would destroy the traditional record industry, despite massive consolidation in the business. After all, file sharers get their music for free and it's hard to compete with free.

So anyone who believes in the doom-and-gloom would be surprised to read this article from The New York Times that states that US music sales climbed 1.6 per cent.

It also reported that The year-end music industry report showed the number of digital tracks sold last year - using devices such as Apple's iPod or Napster's subscription model - climbed to 140.9m, compared with just 19.2m in 2003.

And it seems that reports of the traditional CD's demise were slightly premature. CD album sales increased by 2.3% in 2004 as compared to 2003.