Global Music Fair Opens

Midem, the world's most influential music trade fair opened its doors in Cannes, with much of the focus expected to be on the challenges posed by online music sales.

Online music sales are finally bringing in the bucks for the piracy-battered music industry but there may still be no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

That was the mixed message from a bevy of music and hi-tech heavyweights on the eve of the opening of Midem.

On the bright side, latest figures released by the global recording industry body, the IFPI, showed that digital music has expanded rapidly around the globe.

Today, there are 335 legal online music services, compared with 50 two years ago and last year, single track downloads more than doubled to USD 420 million.

On the downside, music piracy is still rife, particularly on illegal Internet peer-to-peer (P2P) music file-sharing services.

"It's all about making an industry survive," Emi Europe boss Jean-Francois Cecillon told a packed Midemnet session. Of the one billion songs downloaded from the Internet in Rance last year, just 20 million were bought. "That's not even theft, that's pillage," Cecillon stressed.

In addition, the rapidly expanding number of new digital music channels including radio, video, podcasting (do-it-yourself audio or video broadcasts) and the controversial move towards legalizing some of P2P services, is creating a crowded sector where everyone is jostling for a slice of the digital pie.