Music sales up for first time since 1999

Global music industry has been in a downfall for more than a decade after the appearance of online file sharing and illegal downloads. After 13 years, the music industry finally showed signs of recovery posting an annual increase in global sales for 2012.

The International Federation for the Phonographic Industry released its annual Digital Music Report yesterday in London which shows a 0.3% rise in global music sales. According to the figures, the overall music sales increased from $16.2 billion to $16.5 billion from 2011 to 2012, which is the first time in 13 years that sales were not down. Responsible for the positive statistics are Carly Rae Jepsen and the massive revenues brought by Adele’s album “21”.

Digital record sales rose with 9% to $5.6 billion, which is around 34% of total revenue. This, according to the Federation, is due to the worldwide spreading of such services – while in 2011 we could buy a song from only 23 countries in the world, last year the number of these countries jumped to 100. Digital music sales revenue make up more than a half of all sales only in Norway, Sweden and the United States, while in the other parts of the world people still purchase physical CDs and other formats. Frances Moore, chief executive officer at the IFPI, was pleased to point out that the music industry learned how to adapt to the modern online markets which finally led to results.

Another positive trend in the report shows that people sharing illegally music files in 2012 were 17% less than the previous year. It seems the battle against digital piracy is not pointless after all. IFPI reminds that the peak of piracy was in 2005 when one in five Internet users accessed files illegally.

Adele’s album “21” boosted the global recording industry sales reporting 8.3 million copies sold in 2012, while the best-selling single, Carly Rae Jepsen’s Call me Maybe, sold more than 12.5 million copies worldwide. Other contributors to music industry were Taylor Swift, One Direction, Maroon 5 and Flo Rida.