With over a 100 online stores and more to come, the music download business is certainly booming. It seems that everyone has one – from Oxfam to Coca Cola.
To celebrate it’s first birthday, pro-music.org has published a directory of the legal music download sites and stores on the web today, and it demonstrates just how the industry has grown in just a year.
Twelve months ago, when pro-music.org launched, there were 20 sites, with an catalogue of about 200,000 tracks. Now that number is over a hundred, and the major sites have catalogues of more than 500,000 tracks – as more and more distribution deals are made, that particular number will rise dramatically.
pro-music.org has launched sister sites in Germany, France and Italy to reach internet users around the world.
Jay Berman, Chairman and CEO of the IFPI said in a statement: “Pro-music has achieved over twelve months what its founding alliance partners intended it to be – a successful international educational campaign about online music. Pro-music is supported across the music sector, has attracted tens of thousands of visitors and rolled out in national versions in French, German and Italian. The site spells out in clear and simple terms the legal and copyright concerns around online music. It explains the fight against internet piracy. And, above all, it has tracked the surge of new legitimate services that have come on stream in the last year. Pro-music has a vital role to play in improving awareness in this area, and there seems no doubt that the second year of the campaign will be even more important than the first.”
