LONDON (AP) ― Legitimate music downloads still aren’t growing quickly enough.
A report published Monday by the recording industry’s main lobby group showed that digital revenue has grown 8 percent over the past year to about $5.2 billion ― a solid figure for some industries, but not one where overall receipts have fallen by nearly two-thirds amid a shift toward online ― and in many cases illegal ― music downloads.
“The 8 percent figure should be much higher,’’ said Frances Moore, the chief executive of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. “That’s part of our task in 2012.’’
Moore blamed music piracy for starving online retailers and music subscription services of custom, saying the legitimate music business was working in an “extremely challenging’’ environment.
“It’s very difficult to turn things around overnight,’’ she said.
The IFPI’s report highlighted many of those turnaround efforts, noting for example that there are around 500 legitimate music services worldwide offering up to 20 million tracks.
It said subscription services were doing particularly well in Scandinavia, the home of popular music service Spotify, whereas in France the number of subscribers nearly doubled in the first 11 months of 2011.
Music pirates remain the IFPI’s No. 1 enemy, and the group’s report congratulated several countries on their efforts to crack down on illegal file sharing.
It said French authorities had sent out more than 700,000 warnings to suspected copyright violators, an act it said had helped drive down file sharing on peer-to-peer networks by 26 percent since October 2010.
In the United States, the group said most major American Internet service providers had signed up to a “copyright alert system’’ aimed at issuing similar warnings to suspected file sharers.
Even in China, where piracy rates approached 100 percent, the IFPI said progress was being made. In June record companies joined hands with search engine Baidu to fight pirated content and create authorized digital music service Ting.
