What happens if you are caught downloading illegally?

• Sued
• Fined
• Jailed
• Ip-banned.

Sales of Singles and Albums

taken from NME

Sales of albums in the UK have fallen for the sixth consecutive year, according to the latest figures from the British Recorded Music Industry (BPI).

In 2010, combined digital and physical album sales in the UK fell by seven percent, from 128.9 million to 119.9 million. The report, which monitored details gathered by the Official Chart Company, said that despite the overall fall, sales of digital albums had actually risen by 30 percent.

Digital analyst Mark Mulligan said that the report indicates changing trends in the way music is consumed in Britain, reports BBC News. "The simple fact is that CD sales are declining much more quickly than digital sales are growing," he said.

Physical sales of UK singles have also slumped, the report found, falling to 1.9 million sales in 2010 from 2.5 million the year before. This comes despite the combined physical and digital singles market recording the highest sales figures ever with 161.8 million.

Earlier today (January 4), high street music retailer HMV announced it is to close 60 of its stores across the UK in 2011.

Illegal Downloading

Click here for the link to BBC news.

In 2010, over 7.7 million people illegally downloaded music and over 1.2 BILLION tracks have been copied or shared, which ended up costing the music industry over £219 million.

Overall in 2009, album sales have droped by 3.5%, which for the 5th year, they have fallen.

Across the entire year, singles sales increased by 32.7% to a record 152 million, with 98% of those being digital download.

To try and cut down on illegally downloading, Digital Britain have a new scheme set in 2010 to send letters to those downloading songs without permission, and if they choose to ignore this letter, their broadband will be slowed and reduced.

Communications minister Lord Carter said: "We think online piracy is wrong. It is unacceptable. Creative companies, rights owners, individuals, have a right to protection.

It has now been said that over 95% of downloads are illegal.

Technologies

Walkman - marketed in Japan in 1979
CD's and CD players were available since October 1982
MP3 in 1993
Ipod's were first released in October 2001
Tapes in Germany in 1928
Itunes was released in October 2001
Dial Up Broadband started in the 1960s
Broadband was released in 1991