The market for pirated music will continue to grow for at least another five years, outstripping growth for the industry’s online businesses, a new study said on Monday. The report by Informa Media said global Internet music sales — which includes sales of CDs from Web sites such as Amazon.com and song downloads from services such as Apple’s iTunes — will reach US$3.9 billion by 2008, up from $1.1 billion in 2002. “But the value of lost sales due to CD-burning and downloading free songs off so-called peer-to-peer networks such as Grokster and Kazaa will rise to $4.7 billion in the same period from $2.4 billion this year,” reports Reuters.
