Downloads & Ringtones To Save Industry

Variety: Yesterday, PricewaterhouseCoopers released a new report "The Global Entertainment and Media Outlook for 2005-2009" which positively predicts that consumer spending on digital downloads will outperform ringtones at $3.6 billion in 2009 and music delivered to mobile phones will generate sales of $3.4 billion...The number of music downloads sold in the U.S. is also expected to explode from 140 million in 2004 to 2.1 billion in 2009...

While the entire industry is incredibly fluid and hard to forecast with any accuracy, according to their methodology - digitally distributed music will represent nearly 40% of all music sales in the U.S. within five years...Even if their predictions are off the mark a little - this is good news for everyone in the value chain...Globally, PWC also predicts an average annual rise in music sales of 8.3% between 2004 and 2009 to $56.3 billion. (Last year's global music spending was only $37.8 billion.)