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At least 10 billion songs are downloaded for free each year, through illegal Peer-to-Peer (P2P) services. At the same time, worldwide CD sales have been in free-fall since 1999, the year file-sharing began to take hold. They now represent 70 percent of what they did then. "People are getting more free music on mp3s than they're getting on CDs," said Eric Garland, CEO of the music-tracking firm Big Champagne Online Media Measurement. "And nearly all those mp3s are illegally downloaded."This is bad news for an industry that survives on profit generated by successful CDs, most of which goes to cover the millions of dollars funneled into developing, recording and marketing unsuccessful ones. (Although the cost of manufacturing a CD is mere pennies, more than 5,000 CDs are released by major labels in the U.S. every year, and only a couple hundred turn a profit.)The results already are being felt by the "Big Five" record labels (Universal, EMI, BMG, Warner and Sony). They've been firing staffs and consolidating to such an extent, they're now the Big Four. (Sony and BMG merged last year, and rumor has Warner and EMI following suit).
Err Nobby meant Beer Caches I,m sure
