Digital Content Sales Way Up

By Richard Gibson
Dec 30 2010

US based Pew Research Center reported this morning that sales of digital content are on the rise, giving way to a new business model for many companies.

Digital content has been around since the dawn of the internet but it never really took hold. Most often people believe that digital content relates only to eBooks and other such media formats. However, internet research groups everything from eBooks to music into this same category.

The problem for most digital content has been piracy. Piracy has been a thorn in the paw of many publishers and artists over the past several years and continues to be a problem today. But, the latest round of crackdowns on piracy seems to have scared a good many people into paying for the content legally.

According to the poll, 65% of all internet users have purchased some form of digital content in the past year. This is well above the 23% that was found during the last poll. However, there are some new players in the market that are adding to this recent gain.

eBooks have long been a fringe action of the publishing world. However, with the new eReader devices on the market, such as the Amazon Kindle, more people are turning to eBooks for their reading pleasure.

Music is the highest division in digital content but it is also the most pirated division. However, there has been a 34% increase in the number of legally downloaded songs over the past year.