Universal loving digital music era

The Record Industry Association of America (RIAA) was forced to endure several years of declining CD sales with little hope in the future, but digital sales are finally booming the way record labels anticipated.  Music executives were not quite prepared to have to look at new business models and new sources of revenue, but now that they’ve had no choice but to adapt, the money has been good.

During an interview with the Financial Times, Jean Bernard Levy, Vivendi CEO, said digital music is finally turning into the cash cow record executives have hoped for. 

In addition, Universal Music Group and other labels are involved with Nokia and its Comes With Music service that will let phone owners download an unlimited amount of music directly to their phone for one year.

The RIAA endured close to a decade in sliding CD sales, and launched a furious attack on peer-to-peer networking, where it’s possible to find thousands of music tracks available for download for free.  But the Apple iTunes service has helped sell more than five billion music tracks to date, and that number only continues to grow.

While the music industry still isn’t fully adapting to the digital age, it has taken necessary steps to make sure it has high revenue from a growing market.  Analysts, including Clay Shirky from the City of New York University, described the RIAA’s efforts in the digital age as putting "the skull on a pikestaff as a warning to others about how not to deal with the Internet," the RIAA, for better or for worse, continues to make piles of money.

The digital music boom has also been good to consumers, who now have multiple ways to acquire new music.  Amazon has DRM-free music, along with several other services, which give consumers a new way to acquire music legally with the freedoms they requested.