Thats interesting.
Next year it will look like a graphic equaliser from a hi-fi buff who really likes the vocals brought out!
The thing with digital sales, I reckon, is for every one sold, you have lost ten illegally.
I`d love to see a graph of illegal downloads, but of course we can`t. 140 million songs???And the rest!
Illegal downloads are so rife they deserve their own chart now for heavens sake, has anyone found one yet?
I don`t know if I should have asked that, I don`t want to hear the answer......

Martin,

People have been monitoring the P2P networks for some time already. They do know how many are being "shared" (I just can't find my trusty link right now).

One thing to investigate is if they are sharing material that has been downloaded or from original CDs.

And I wonder what figures this graph represents ..? Chart eligible downloads ? Or downloads from a few specific sites?

As well as illegal downloads there are millions more that are legal - off artists own sites (we've had over 30,000 downloads off ours), or music portals with free downloads etc etc. How can anyone count all of these?

I think these are just notional figures and are not in any way representative of the true download situation as it is impossible to count them all - so not worth paying any attention to ...

Stretch
ps interesting programme last night with Alan Yentob - looking at the wider implications of the internet and it's effect on our culture.

Congrats! Those are great figures. But in general terms, the amount of sharing vastly outweighs digital sales. So the stuff beyond the big three (iTunes, etc.) hardly change the figures.