By David Goldstein
Watch the music industry’s revenue sources evolve over the years. Our friends over at Business Insider posted this interesting article and chart that shows how things have changed. The CD has slowly but surely been dying with the advent of the Internet. P2P services like Napster and Bittorrent have accelerated its demise, but legal alternatives like Apple’s iTunes and Spotify have brought legal alternatives to the music industry.Having said that, what this chart does not show is that the actual total revenues have gone done also. The pie has shrunk, because digital consumption hasn’t completely replaced the CD one-for-one. People buy individual singles, rather than a full CD, that is, people disassemble albums and only buy the songs they love. So instead of paying $9.99 for a full CD, someone might only purchase the two or three hit singles on the CD, leaving the music industry a lot worse off than before.
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