Ancillary Text / Planning 6-How have the sales of CD's changed?

CD sales have dropped dramatically in the last five years due to illegal downloading from the Internet and the popular and easy to do CD burning.

 This has caused record companies problems, for example: The Universal Group (one of the largest record cooperation's)  had to cut the sales prices up to 25% in the last two years, in an attempt to increase sales. 

The figures below show the drastic decline in CD sales, going hand in hand with an increase in downloads from the internet.

Single Sales    CD   :  Downloads

2007               6.6m      77.5m

2008               4.1m      109.8m

2009               2.5m      148.8m

2010               1.9m      158.6m

2011               1.1m      175.1m

This graph to the left shows the steady increase of digital downloads against the steady decrease in physical CD's. Now in 2013, the digital half of the graph is double what it was in 2010, with digital downloads dominating the way in which we listen to music.

I would say that in the last 5 years, CD's are becoming less of a mass market item and more of a niche product that caters to a small and loyal following.

Nowadays it is not so much the sales of CD's, which makes the artist earn his money but more iTunes and other online downloading sites. Artists now make the majority of their money from concerts and touring.  That change came along because it is so easy for everyone to access Internet anytime and anywhere. In addition iTunes also allows the buyer to buy only one song of a whole album, which makes it more convenient for some people.

It seems that physical CD's are increasingly becoming a thing of the past.