Death of the single, Music Industry is dead right?

Well what with all the file sharing and like it must be hitting sales.

What? No? Who says? The British Phonographic Industry? The same ones that wrote the disconnection clause in the Digital Economy Act? Fed spiked and overdramatic info to MPs that influenced the debate?

And the ones that went loggerheads with MI5 and MI6 over serious security concerns (which could cause a lot more damage than a few people download an MP3s – all of which incidentally doesn’t seem to be impacting sales, more the opposite.

Physical               Digital                                               Total Sales

2002                       43.9m                   –                              43.9m

2003                       30.8m                   –                              30.8m

2004                       26.5m                   5.7m                      32.2m

2005                       21.4m                   26.4m                    47.8m

2006                       13.9m                   53.0m                    66.9m

2007                       8.6m                     77.9m                    86.5m

2008                       4.9m                     110.2m                 115.1m

2009 YTD              1.6m                      116.0m                 117.6m

(BPI’s own quoted figures for singles sales. Source: The Official Charts Company.)

Eh? So who/what are they trying to ‘protect’ if they doing so well? Fergal & co. are just greedy, that’s what I think.