Why can't the music executives just acknowledge that people are tired of hearing terrible music? Develop some talent and maybe we'll consider buying more than 5% of the albums on the Billboard 200.
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060122/ap_ ... music_show
CANNES, France - Recorded music sales resumed their decline in 2005, the industry's leading global body said Sunday, despite high-profile victories against piracy and a surge in online and mobile music store revenues.
Global music retail revenues fell about 2 percent last year, said John Kennedy, chairman and CEO of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. In 2004 they remained flat at $33.6 billion, punctuating a four-year slide.
The new downturn, based on data from three-quarters of the global market, underlined major challenges facing record companies as executives assembled for the music industry's largest European gathering, Midem, which is taking place this week in the French Riviera town of Cannes.
The drop in overall sales came despite a threefold increase in digital music revenue to $1.1 billion from $380 million, while illegal file-sharing volumes changed little, according to a separate IFPI market report published Thursday. The federation sees total sales broadly unchanged in 2006.
Record bosses are now having to look beyond piracy to explain the latest decline in revenues, which have fallen about 20 percent globally since 1999.
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Piracy in all its forms has been the major factor in this reversal but not the only factor," said Eric Nicoli, chairman of EMI Group PLC, the world's No. 3 record company.