Russ Crupnick Quotations

Older adults have the interest and the disposable income, so the industry can't afford to take them for granted. To spur greater sales among this audience, it's important to make them aware of available music that might interest them, so they shop for music more often.

If this trend continues throughout the remainder of the fourth quarter 2005 and into next year, it would signify a solid victory in the music industry's efforts against illegal music file sharing in the U.S..

I think you may be looking at the future.

There clearly are a small percentage of users who have taken advantage of filing sharing services to compile massive libraries,

What's been a challenge for the industry is people swapping CDs and ripping and burning copies of them. It's a big piece of how people are acquiring music.

And they're buying twice as much country as classic rock.

There's been a lot of download activity from what's known as the early adopters,

Consumers are clearly making the most of all the choices they have to discover and purchase music, and physical product is still a very large part of the equation. For example, among teens, sales of CDs are up five percent in 2005, illustrating a halo effect from digital music, interaction with video games and other venues for new music discovery.

It's important to keep in mind that file sharing is occurring less frequently than before the RIAA began its legal efforts to stem the tide of (peer-to-peer) file sharing, ... We're just seeing the first increase in these (file-sharing) numbers.

In order for legal digital music to really work it's got to be sustained growth throughout the year and not just a seasonal phenomenon.

The challenge is: How do you maintain this? The industry has to do a stronger job of reaching out to more mainstream consumers.