Euro small fry iTunes won't kill the CD

iTunes et al may be parting the broadband-enabled and their money at some speed but the CD is alive and well - and will be for some time yet, new research has claimed.

Analyst house JupiterResearch has published a report, European Digital Music: Identifying Opportunity, claiming that, while online music is a digital success story, there's no need to bury the CD just yet. The report says European digital music revenue will jump from the €10.9m it made in 2003 to bringing in €836m in 2009, when it will make up just eight per cent of total music sales for the continent.

This year's UK launch of Napster, iTunes and a host of other music services has pushed year-on-year revenues to almost quadruple, with JupiterResearch predicting that by the end of this year the online song shops will have made €46.3m by the end of the year.

It's the UK that will be leading from the front in the digital tune revolution in the future, say the analysts, lining the download shops' pockets to the tune of €248m and making up 30 per cent of the market.

While the boom in sales is doubtless good news for the digital music player makers, CDs are still music fans' technology of choice.

By 2009, the European music market as a whole will be worth €10.9bn - but just 0.5 per cent of that will be digital.

Still, the online song shops are good news for the record company, despite their relative paltry showing next to CDs. Online music stores give the record labels over 60 per centof the cost of each 99¢ track and get just four per cent for themselves.

So what do industry execs think would spur a more substantial growth? More compatibility between the diverse digital music formats - WMA, Atrac, AAC, WAV and others to numerous to name - and the music players they can be played on.

Are they going to get it? Unlikely. Market leader Apple is famously coy with sharing iTunes compatibility. When Microsoft tried to woo Jobs into dropping iTunes' technological chastity belt, it was rebuffed. When Jobs tried to put the moves on Sony's top dog for a similar partnership, his advances were also spurned