Global music industry immediate outlook poor

Things are going to get worse before the outlook improves for the world's music industry, according to a report released today.

Research from the Informa Media Group predicts the value of global music sales will drop for the fourth year in a row to £16.5bn (€23.57bn) this year and will fall further next year as sales continue to be badly affected by music piracy and file sharing.

However the report predicts that the continued fall is reversible and that a recovery will be underway by 2005, provided label records can work around piracy and support legal digital download services.

Since Apple's launch of iTunes, the sole legal download service to have a wide range of songs from all the major labels at a reasonable price, software companies and music labels have raced to launch their own versions.

US software group Roxio bought the rights to the famous Napster brand and relaunched it as a legal site, while Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo! have all either launched digital music services or have well-advanced plans to do so.