Slight progression in music market in 2012. - For the first time in 14 years the music market has progressed, according to a report published by IFPI (International Federation of Phonographic Industry), which brings together the main federations of music producers in the world. Global recorded music sales reached around $16.5 billion in 2012, an increase of 0.3%. This is the first time that growth has been recorded since 1999, after an inexorable fall recorded with the appearance of Napster at the beginning of the 90s, the service for sharing music online, despite it being illegal. The online music market recorded good results last year - revenue increased by 9% to $5.6 billion. This segment has a bright future as legal services for downloading and streaming now exist in 100 countries, as opposed to 23 only two years previously, and legal services now make up 34% of the market at global level. Download music, which went up by 12% in volume last year, represented 70% of the digital market, in other words 4.3 billion legal downloads last year. Pay subscriptions, the other pillar of digital music, accounted for 10% of the total. According to IFPI, the number of people with subscriptions to a pay service shot up by 44 to 20 million subscribers. A consumer satisfaction survey showed, moreover, that consumers are satisfied with the services provided - with 77% stating that the services they have are “excellent”, “very good”, or “fairly good”. For the future, the report underlines that the major challenge that the market will have to meet in order to continue its growth and capitalise on its enormous potential will be to fight online piracy more effectively - with 32% of internet users still regularly visiting illegal download sites. (IL/transl.fl)