Some up to date statistics on world recorded music sales.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/busi...ded-music-sales-fall
Excerpts from the artilce:
Global recorded music revenues fell 8.4% last year, about $1.45bn, to $15.9bn according to the annual Recording Industry in Numbers report by international music industry body the IFPI.
Overall physical sales, the term used in the industry for sales of products such as CDs, fell by 14.2% year on year to $10.4bn.
Digital revenues grew by 5.3% year on year to $4.6bn to account for 29% of all recorded music revenues (but that is a 5.3% increase against an 8.4% overall decline). However, the rate of digital revenue growth has halved year on year as the industry continues to struggle with piracy and winning consumers over to legal download models.
The world's two largest markets, the US and Japan, took a hammering last year accounting for 57% of the total global decline in trade revenues. In 2009 the two countries accounted for 80% of the global decline.
In the US overall sales fell by 10% with physical sales down 20% to just over $2bn and digital sales stagnating with 1.2% growth to $2bn. Japan saw an overall market decline of 8.3% with the report noting that "rapidly rising online is threatening the development of the digital market".
Of the major markets ranking in the top 20 by size, just three saw year-on-year sales increases with Korea up 11.7%, India up 16.5% and Mexico up 0.9%.
-So.... humans are buying and listening to less music now than ever before the internet, and the only growing markets are Korea, India and Mexico.