The issues raised by media ownership in contemporary media practice

"if music executives sold bottled water, they'd be calling for a ban on tap water downloads"
I find it ironic that I'm listening to downloaded music while researching into why the music industry doesn't like it.

• Sales of singles were up 33% during the recession, where-as the sales of albums was down
• The music industry grew by 4.7% during the 2008 recession.
• Live music makes more money than recorded music, people (including me) are willing to pay more to see the artist live and spend money on merchandise than they are to own the music. Illegal downloading can be seen as another marketing strategy.
• Musicglue offers free music in exchange for email addresses. If enough email addresses are collected they can justify a gig - making the music industry more money.
• 90% of start ups like musicglue and last.FM in the music industry fail.
• itunes doesn't make money.
• HMV's loyalty card system cross-sells music with concert tickets and merchandise.
• File sharing websites like Napster and ThePirateBay are popular - these all have servers in different countries whose laws allow them to file share.
• In 2000 global sales of CD albums peaked at 2.455 billion
• CDs were first pressed in germany and were made the have a diameter of 12cm, this is so they could hold the whole of Beethovens 9th symphony.
• First CD player cost over £1000, the first commercial album pressed was The Visitors - ABBA.
• CDs meant that music can be transported and owned easier due to the compact size.
• In 2009, digital devices outsold CD players for the first time.
• 117million tracks were brought by the end of october in 2009, 99% were legal downloads.
• Digital sales count for 1/5 of all music sales.
• Despite closing, 17.9% of album sales came from Woolworths and Zavvi.
• More songs are available without DRM meaning people can now burn their own CD's.