“The amount of money that songwriters received from sales of CDs fell by 15 per cent in the first half of this year, according to figures to be published this week by the MCPS-PRS Alliance, which collects royalties for songwriters and composers.”
Declining CD sales mean songwriters will earn more from performance rights – playback in shops and pubs, than recorded music sales.
MCPS-PRS increased revenue from internet downloads to £82.3m
The Observer
Ah, but the question people will ask is, “is the decline in CD sales due to illicit copying / downloading or due to the decline in the economy in the UK & USA”. On a personal viewpoint, I don’t really believe that the number of downloads has increased significantly this year over any other year, indeed, it could be argued that as a result of the latest flood of warnings being sent from ISPs people could be hesitating about downloading for a while.
Also, is this figure just concentrating on CD sales, or are the Legal downloads from iTunes etc also being taken into account, as these are direct revenue rather than Performance Rights – thinking of the
comment in particular, as the media trend is shifting to an extent…