Physical music sales are down for 2 reasons
1/ We have been stuck in a pretty much a worldwide recession and one of the first things to go are such luxuries as Cd's.
2/ Physical music is old hat... people just don't want Cd's cluttering up the place when you can stack tens of thousands of downloads on a hard drive.
The reason the music industry bitching on so much about sales being down and its all the pirates fault is that they make more profit out of physical sales.... Don't get why myself as i would have thought downloads would be much more profitable... but then i guess the music industry are so technologically inept that they have not realised where the future is and how to embrace it.
Also as quoted in the article
there's a generation growing up that has never owned a physical CD.
The last time i went out and bought a Cd player has to be a good ten years now ...so why the hell would i want Cd's? ....... note to record company's THATS EVOLUTION live with it.
Something though that makes me laugh is they always forget to mention that vinyl sales have actually increased ... but this would help disprove there arguments totally so i guess this is more of a intentional oversite than forgetfullness