Term Project: New Media and the Distribution of Music

My Term project is about the new approach the music industry has taken to the way music is distributed to the public. Since the year 2000, CD sales have decreased 45%, thus implementing a new way of distributing music by way of digital downloads. iTunes and other sites sell whole albums in mp3 format which tend to be cheaper in price than CD format albums. Highly anticipated albums are no longer selling as they once need, but people are downloading a lot more albums from online sources like itunes. Stores like Best Buy, Circuit City and the Virgin Mega Store depend on revenue from CD Sales. The Virgin Mega Store is going out of business because of the decline in CD sales. Artists are going from CD format to an all digital means when it comes down to their music, using websites like iTunes, MySpace, Facebook, etc. In the year 2008, 1 billion songs were downloaded, which is a 27% increase from 2007, which shows how effective digital downloads have become and how obsolete CD format music has become.