In the Warner Music Group noted a slowdown of sales of digital music. In the fourth quarter of last year, sales growth amounted to only 5% in the third quarter was 10% in the second – 11%. General Director Warner Music, Edgar Bronfman (Edgar Bronfman) tend to associate it with a new marketing policy, Apple.

At the beginning of last year, Apple to convince record companies to abandon DRM protection system in the store iTunes. As a result, many popular songs have risen in price by 30% – from $ 0.99 to $ 1.29.

iTunes is the leader in the music market (not just digital) in the U.S.: in the past year through this online store has sold a quarter of all music tracks. In the second place on the retail chain Walmart with 14% of the market. If we consider only selling online, here iTunes owns 69% of the market. The total market for digital music downloads in the past year increased by 35%. However, while the main musical formats is a good old CD-ROM: a CD last year sold 65% of all music.

Via AppleInsider