Appendix : Having a ball;

What's working in music? 

The Economist

October 9, 2010 

U.S. Edition

In the supposedly benighted music business, a lot of things are making money

EVEN by the elevated standards of such things, Lady Gaga's "Monster Ball" concert is over the top. The show, which is loosely organised around the theme of a woman's search for the ultimate party, features a fountain of fake blood, a burning piano and a host of dancing men. At one point Gaga is encased in a spinning gyroscope. Later she is done up to resemble a remote-controlled snowflake. At about $100 plus parking, nearly all the shows are selling out. Welcome to the supposedly doomed music business.

For the past ten years sales of recorded music have declined so steeply as to become a cautionary tale about the disruptive power of the internet. The rise of illegal file-sharing and the end of the digital "replacement cycle", in which people bought CDs to replace tapes and records, caused spending to collapse. Sales of CDs, tapes and records have slid by 40% in Britain since 2001, according to the BPI, which represents record labels. In Japan, the world's biggest CD sales market, the number of discs sold fell by 6% in 2008 and 24% in 2009. Price cuts meant that revenues dropped even more steeply.