Interesting graph here. Always refreshing to see how all this plays out in terms of units shipped. Never would’ve thought digital downloads, whether they be for singles or for albums, would represent such low revenue in this time and age. Seems like people still haven’t gotten that used to buyin’ on the web, and it appears to be just ridiculous to count on making any money with CDs, so yeah, this graph is yet some more corroborating evidence that bands have got to be as creative in marketing whatever they can, than as in creating their music.
Multi-Tasked Creativity will represent the musician’s greatest ally in the decade to come.
Woof

It’s certainly going to take a lot of creativity– people aren’t physically consuming less music I don’t think; they’re just buying less of it, so the problem lays in trying to get consumers to buy something that they can often times get for free. If you look at the graph, CD sales begin to drop off right when Napster came about and people began to switch from dial-up to faster connection speeds.
This is for the value of units SHIPPED. I’m assuming this means the number of units shipped to stores for purchase. I’m sure there is a correlation to of this to actual sales, but I just wanted to point out that it’s not the same thing. Also, how do you “ship” download singles and albums?
@Robert.
Very true. Missed that one. We can all only assume that we are talking about sales revenue here.
This isn’t the most accurate of graphs, but it probably paints a close enough portrait.
@Robert is right. In 1998, downloads were not counted as “shipped” in the way every other media has been. It’s part of the wonderful RIAA’s strategy to discount digital downloads as a viable medium.
I can’t find the article, but the real numbers are much, much more skewed towards downloads as being on top…even exponentially so.
Their is a lot of physical music sales that go unrecorded.
A lot more bands are putting out cdr’s and tapes that they or their label(usually a one or two person operation) copy and dub on blank cassettes and cds.
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If you are talking about Netflix, I beevile you can technically do this (haven’t tried it out myself yet). You might want to be careful that you do not violate your contract. Just because multiple people can stream movies at the same time, it doesn’t mean that you necessarily are supposed to.For example, if my wife wants to watch a movie while I’m watching a different movie, that probably wouldn’t be against the contract as we are one established household. However, if I were to give out my login information to friends who do not live with me just to save a few bucks, I’d probably have broken that contract. If your scenario is closer to the second setup, I’d pump out the 8 bucks extra a month for another contract. It’s not like it’s really that expensive.
yeah I thought downloads were higher too… personally I miss physical CD’s.
Gavin, Microsoft’s senior diecotrr of Internet Explorer,a0disclosed yesterday that Internet Explorer 9 had already been downloaded 2.35 million times in the first 24 hours sincea0itsa0release on Monday.