2012 Worldwide Digital Music Sales Up

After a couple of very flat years in digital sales that really had the music industry massively scared, it looks like 2012 will once again show an increase, perhaps even a substantial one. According to research analysts Strategy Analytics, 2012 should look like this when it ends:

• streaming revenues up 40% to $1.2 billion.
• downloads up about 8.5% to $4.3 billion.
• total digital music sales including mobile up 18% to $9.5 billion
• digital music increases to 39% of all music sales

The interesting thing is that there's still a lot of physical product being consumed, if digital is only 39% of the total music sales. If that holds true, that means that the total world-wide recorded music sales should come in at somewhere around $25 billion, which is a lot better than it's been for years.

On November 1st I'm going to be at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey to give the keynote address at the ATMM Conference. My theme for the talk is "The Music Industry Is NOT Dying." These figures illustrate the point completely.

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