"Harmony is a step in the right direction," said Jeff Bronikowski, vice president of business development at Universal Music Group Inc., during a Plug.IN industry panel.Īpple's threats to RealNetworks illustrate the lengths to which companies will go to protect proprietary systems, however. Several executives at the Jupiter event said that if consumers could buy songs from any site and play them on any player, it could spark more sales. music industry grow after four years of steeply declining sales, digital music still will not replace CDs or bring music sales back to their 1999 peak, according to a Jupiter forecast released at Plug.IN. Though sales of digitally distributed music will more than double compared to last year, reaching more than US$270 million in 2004, online music sales as a percentage of overall music sales remain flat, at about 12 percent, according to David Card, a Jupiter Research analyst. Incompatibilities among file formats and DRM systems is causing confusion among consumers and dampening online music sales, according to a variety of industry executives at the Jupiter Plug.IN conference in New York earlier this week. Though Microsoft represents a far bigger threat to Apple's digital media business than does RealNetworks, the spat over Harmony touches a raw nerve in the industry.
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