The Digital Music Market in Europe: A Series

The IHT has come out with a great series of stories on the current state of European digital music market, outlining the hurdles and opportunities. The story comes as stateside music services are launching in the continent.

Digital music wars play out in Europe: A story on the current music players in EU, and how mobile music combined with online would be a better bet for companies.

‘Monopolies’ slowing online music in Europe: “These collecting societies have been accused of trying to perpetuate their cozy unchallenged positions as gatekeepers for the royalties owed to their members. They are not yet an integrated part of the borderless world of the Internet.”

Major music labels fight back in Europe: Is digital distribution the key to recovery?

Digital music protection improves, but it’s still not perfect: In Europe, the introduction of DRM is further complicated by taxes imposed on blank digital media, like CDs, and on hardware devices such as PC hard drives, CD burners and MP3 players in exchange for the right to make private copies for personal use.

Band of online music pirates numbers in the millions: Last year, roughly 150 billion music files were transferred over these file-sharing networks, up nearly threefold from 55 billion in 2002. Western Europe accounts for about one-fourth of the total, while the U.S. accounts for 43 percent.

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