Nokia shipped 127m phones in Q4 2009, including 13.5m smartphones

"Nokia shipped 126.9 million phones in the quarter at an average price of 63 euros, it said in the statement. The adjusted margin in its main handset division jumped to 15.4 percent, beating Kallasvuo’s target of at least 12.4 percent.
Smartphone revenue rose to 3.9 billion euros, while the average selling price declined to 186 euros from 190 euros in the preceding quarter, Nokia said.
Sales of the N series multimedia phones were 4.6 million in the quarter, while company sold 8.9 million of the E series, business-oriented models that compete with Research In Motion Ltd.’s Blackberry."
Source: Nokia official figures, reported by BusinessWeek 28th January 2010
[General smartphone definition - a phone with an operating system, web access, QWERTY keyboard, messaging capability]

The iPad announcement generated 177,000 tweets in the first hour

"It should come as no surprise that the Twittersphere was (and still is) all a-buzz about the iPad — the build-up to which has been months in the making — but the iPad averaging nearly 3,000 tweets per minute in the first hour is just plain remarkable. We haven’t seen anything like it in recent history. According to Trendrr, tweets did taper off a bit after that first hour, but are still coming at about 75,000 per hour, or 1,000 per minute."
Data from Trendrr, reported by Mashable, 27th January 2010

Piracy has led to a decline in the local music releases in France, Spain and Brazil

"In France, there has been a striking fall in the number of local repertoire albums released in recent years. In the first half of 2009, 107 Frenchrepertoire albums were released, 60 per cent down on the 271 in the same period of 2003. French artist signings have also slumped by 60 per cent, from 91 in the first half of 2002 to 35 in the same period of 2009. Overall investment in marketing and promotion by the French music industry fell nine per cent in the first six months of 2009. It is estimated that 25 per cent of the French internet population currently download music illegally from P2P networks or other sources on a monthly basis (Jupiter Research, 2009).
In Spain, a culture of state-tolerated apathy towards illegal file-sharing has contributed to a dramatic slump in the music market. Spain has the worst online piracy problem of any major market in Europe. Today, P2P usage in Spain, at 32 per cent of internet users, is more than double the European rate of 15 per cent (Jupiter Research, 2009). The Spanish legitimate music market is now only one third of its size in 2001 and fell by around 17 per cent in 2009 alone. Local artist album sales in the Top 50 declined by 65 per cent between 2004 and 2009.
In Brazil, music sales fell by more than 40 per cent between 2005 and 2009, with a disastrous impact on investment in local repertoire. In 2008 there were only 67 full priced local artist album releases by the five biggest music companies in Brazil – just one tenth of the number (625) a decade earlier. This has been particularly damaging in a market where 70 per cent of music consumed is domestic repertoire."
[The report says that these are just illustrative markets, not the only markets where this effect has been seen]
Source: Page 19 of IFPI Digital Music Report 2010

Digital music - 2003 vs 2009

Click to enlarge

Source: Page 6 of IFPI Digital Music Report 2010

Etsy sold $181m worth of goods in 2009

"Total Members: over 3.9 million
Total Sellers: over 250,000
Items Currently Listed: over 5 million
Page Views per month: over 670 million

Total $ sold (Gross Merchandise Sales)
2005 = $166,000
2006 = $3.8 million
2007 = $26 million
2008 = $87.5 million
2009 = $180.6 million"
Source: Etsy press stats, retrieved 28th January 2010

Online book piracy represents roughly 10% of total United States book sales

"Attributor’s FairShare Guardian™ service discovered that over 9 million pirated book copies were downloaded in a recent study of ~1,000 books of various genres.
These free downloads represent potential losses of $2.75-3 billion to the book publishing industry.
Online book piracy represents roughly 10% of total United States book sales.12
On average, nearly 10,000 copies of every book published are downloaded for free, led by titles in the Business and Investing genre, which average over 13,000 free downloads per title.
Titles within the Business and Investing, Professional and Technical and Science categories are potentially losing over $1 million per title to online book piracy."
Source: US Book Anti-Piracy Research Finding, Attributor Corporation, 14th January 2010

The YouTube video David After Dentist has generated nearly $30,000 in payments for the family

"Embedded ads in the YouTube clip have netted his family nearly $30,000"
Source: Time Magazine, 12th November 2009

Vodafone has 450,000 European subscribers to its music service

"No single kind of digital service is going to save the music business on its own, but every little helps. Doing its bit, Vodafone came to the Midem music-biz event having totted up the number of paying customers it has for unlimited subscription music - the model that offers perhaps the most likely salvation…
The result: 450,000 around Europe. That makes it the continent’s biggest subscription music operator, it claimed (Spotify has just over 250,000, it said during the conference, and is looking to provide its service to mobile carriers). Voda attracted 100,000 music subscribers in December alone, it said at the event in Cannes.
The telco first started offering unlimited, DRM’ed music downloads for £1.99, via subscription-music vendor Omnifone’s MusicStation service, in September 2007, so has been in the game a relatively long time, but it’s recently started concentrating again on a la carte downloads, striking deals with major labels to remove DRM. That allows is to offer a bundle of 10 MP3s a month to consumers - an offering that labels have made standard to many retailers.
Voda’s DRM-free repertoire is only about two million, the music industry has digitised some 11 million tracks, but Voda says will have six million soon. Numbers on Nokia’s Comes With Music service are unavailable."
Source: Figures revealed by Vodafone at MIDEM, reported by PaidContent, 26th January 2010

Apple 'do a bit better than break even' on the iTunes store and the iPhone app store

"Apple is still breaking even on the iTunes Store - and the App Store for that matter - according to recent disclosures by Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer. "Regarding the App Store and the iTunes Store, we're running those a bit over break-even, and that hasn't changed," Oppenheimer stated during a recent quarterly financial call. The break-even status remains despite paid download volumes approaching 2.5 billion songs annually.
The comments support a longstanding Apple model that places hardware above content. At present, iTunes Store downloads are at best a bait for iPods and iPhones, and financially a sideshow."
Source: DigitalMusicNews, 25th January 2010

What American consumers use their phones for

"U.S. consumers are frequently/occasionally doing the following with their phones:
-- 72% are text messaging – up from 65% last year, and increases across all generations
-- 42% are accessing the Internet– up from 36% last year
-- 30% are using mobile online search
-- 27% are downloading apps to their phone
-- 26% are using GPS – up from 9% last year
-- 15% are purchasing products"
Source: State of the Media Democracy US 4th Edition, Deloittes, December 2009

US TV viewing by type of device

"Over the last 6 months, U.S. consumers have watched their favorite TV programs on the following platforms:
-- 77% watched them live on their home television system
-- 30% watched them via their DVR on their home television system
-- 17% watched them via a free online video service (Hulu, TV.com)
-- 18% have watched via the show’s Internet site – up from 13% last year
-- 10% viewed them from a video-sharing site (like YouTube)
-- 3% watched them on a portable MP3 video player
-- 2% watched them on their mobile/smart phone"
Source: State of the Media Democracy US 4th Edition, Deloittes, December 2009

Blur 'probably' made 20 times more from licencing Song 2 than from its record sales

"[Chris Morrison] said that simple use of an artist's music on an advert is less troublesome. Blur made "probably 20 times as much as the record generated" from Song 2 from sync licences. The only one that was turned down came from a manufacturer of stealth fighter jets, apparently."
Source: Blur manager Chris Morrison, speaking at MIDEM, reported by MIDEM Net blog, 25th January 2010