News

Sales of recorded music declined by 9.2% on a monetary basis and 11% on a unit basis worldwide during the first half of 2002, according to recently released figures from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI). The drop is a continuation of a long slump that began in the mid-1990s, blamed by many music industry executives on the widespread use of CD burners and the popularity of downloading tunes on the Internet. Others acknowledge that increasing competition for consumers' time and money—especially films on DVD—is eating into music industry profits.

The London-based trade organization reported that sales of CD albums were down 7% during the first half of the year, with CD singles sales off 17%. Pre-recorded cassette tapes are headed for obsolescence, with sales down 31%. Overall music sales were off 6.8% in the US, 7.5% in Western Europe, and approximately 16% in Asia. "The figures are disappointing but not unexpected," said IFPI chairman Jay Berman. The trade group hopes for an upturn during the winter holiday shopping season. Sales for the first half of the year typically account for only 40% of the industry's annual sales.

During the same week that the IFPI released its figures, a consortium of entertainment industry advocates launched an appeal to US colleges and universities, seeking their help to contain Internet-based piracy. The Songwriters Guild of America (SGA), the National Music Publishers' Association (NMPA), the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) sent a letter to more than 2300 educational institutions asking them to educate students against downloading music and movies over broadband lines available on most campuses.

Some studies have demonstrated that college servers are "hubs" for massive file-sharing activity, with up to 75% of a university's bandwidth consumed by frenzied downloaders. "Students need to know that just because everyone is doing it doesn't make it right," said MPAA president Jack Valenti of what he described as "Internet theft." The signers of the letter asked the universities to impose penalties on violators. "Stealing is stealing is stealing, whether it's done with sleight of hand by sticking something in a pocket or it's done with the click of a mouse," the letter said.

"Without copyright protections, the future of the arts is threatened," said Songwriters Guild president Rick Carnes. "Copyright encourages the promotion of new arts in our culture." The letter sent to universities coincided with deliberations by the US Supreme Court over the legality of the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act, which added 20 years to the previous term of copyright protection. US copyright terms have been extended 11 times in the past 40 years, at the behest of the entertainment industry.

The copyright wrangle got nastier during the first week of October, when musicians Bob Dylan, Billy Joel, and James Taylor filed a lawsuit in a Manhattan federal court against Vivendi Universal's MP3.com, claiming that the music site unlawfully distributed copies of their songs on the Internet. The suit charges that MP3.com copied tracks from commercial CDs and then offered the music files to users, and seeks $150,000 for each alleged infringement. MP3.com paid out $133 million to settle previous copyright infringement suits. Vivendi Universal declined to comment on the current litigation.