It seems that a sensible decision has at last been reached that should be of benefit to consumers.
http://www.thebusinessonline.com/DJStory.aspx?DJStoryID=20060118DN005920Universal Music Group International said it was digitizing 100,000 previously deleted European recordings in order to make them available over the Internet.
Universal will take recordings from what it claims is the music industry's largest archive, including music from Marianne Faithfull, Fairport Convention, Nirvana and Jacques Brel.
The global music trade body, IFPI, reported last October that the value of digital download sales have now overtaken the value of the global singles market.
Global sales of recorded music fell 1.9% in the first half of 2005, the latest period for which figures are available, while physical music sales fell 6.3% over the period, however digital music sales tripled over the period to 6% of total record industry sales.
The growing uptake in broadband and 3G mobile phones helped boost the market for digital music downloads. A number of high-profile music download services have also launched in recent months, aiming to compete with Apple Computer's (AAPL) iTunes service.
Universal said Wednesday it expected the digitization process to be an ongoing one and to involve substantial investment, particularly for the excavation and digitization of older, rare analogue material.
"Over the next three to four years, we aim to reissue perhaps as many as 10,000 albums for downloading, which amounts to more than 100,000 tracks," said Barney Wragg, senior vice president of Universal's eLabs division.
"This program will offer material that, in some cases, goes back to the early days of recorded music," he added.
The tracks will be supplied to all Universal's online business partners, and the first digital tracks will be available to consumers from February. Thousands more deleted tracks are planned for release before the end of 2006.
I think this is a positive step in providing what the consumer has asked for, and a welcome move away from the traditional "make unobtainable when sales drop" business model.
Anyone else wonder why it has taken them so long to make this simple marketing decision ?
