“iTunes song download rate is about 18 million per day and (new) app download rate is about 65 million per day.”

“Retail sales of music in the United States, from CDs to ringtones, declined by about a fifth in 2008 to $8.5 billion as consumers stopped buying music and turned to peer-to-peer networks where it is available for free. Globally, wholesale shipments of recorded music fell by nearly a tenth, to $18.4 billion. This changed the very meaning of success. The biggest album of 2008, Lil Wayne’s The Carter Three sold 2.87 million copies in the United States, according to Neilson Soundscan. Nine years earlier, the top album was Millenium by the Backstreet Boys. It sold 9.45 million copies.”

“After intensive lobbying by the music industry, in June this year Japan approved an amendment to its Copyright Law that would see downloaders of unauthorized music face stiff criminal penalties in addition to the civil remedies already in place.”

“The focus of this review is not the better known acoustics of instruments, but the structure of music itself. The physical basis of the evolution of Western music in the last half millennium is discussed, culminating with the development of the ‘blues’. The paper refers to a number of works which expand the connections, and introduces material specific to the development of the ‘blues’. Several conclusions are made: (1) that music is axiomatic like mathematics and that to appreciate music fully listeners must learn the axioms; (2) that this learning does not require specific conscious study but relies on a linkage between the creative and quantitative brain and (3) that a key element of the musical ‘blues’ comes from recreating missing notes on the modern equal temperament scale. The latter is an example of ‘art built on artifacts’. Finally, brief reference is made to the value of music as a tool for teaching physics, mathematics and engineering to non-scientists.”