5m music tracks are downloaded or streamed from Google China each day

""We were finally able to take action to monetize the huge music usage in China," said Gary Chen, chairman and CEO of Top 100 [who partner with Google], speaking at the Musexpo conference in Los Angeles this week. "On the first day, we got three million downloads and streams. Now, that is closer to five million daily, at a ratio of one download to six streams.""
Source: DigitalMusicNews, 29th April 2009

Global music sales fell by >8% in 2008

"Global recorded music sales fell by more than 8 percent in 2008 to $18.42 billion led by a sharp drop-off in sales in the United States, according to the world music trade body IFPI.
The global music industry has seen recorded music sales tumble in recent years due to the twin impact of a transition by consumers to cheaper digital song formats such as MP3s and rampant piracy in many countries.
While digital music sales are growing, they have failed to make up for the shortfall of compact disc sales.
Overall, U.S. music sales fell by 19 percent last year while sales in Europe were down by 6 percent. Latin America was also down by 5 percent but Asia was the one positive regional bright spot with sales up slightly by 1 percent.
Sales of physical music formats like CDs fell 15 percent globally to $13.83 billion, led by a drop of nearly a third in U.S. physical format sales and an 11-percent fall in European physical sales.
Digital music sales, which include song downloads, mobile music, online subscriptions and streaming via advertising supported services, grew by 24 percent globally to $3.78 billion. Global digital music sales were dominated by the United States where sales grew 16.5 percent to $1.78 billion."
Source: IPRI figures, cited by Reuters on 21st April 2009

70-80% of material on Pirate Bay is legal

"Kolmisoppi revealed that he had looked more directly into the issue by performing a survey on 1,000 random torrents from the site. Along with some workers in chat rooms, Kolmisoppi tried to figure out how much of this material appeared to infringe copyright—though they apparently did so without downloading any of it.
The result? 70 to 80 percent of the material was deemed to be legal for sharing, and Kolmisoppi claimed that there was actually a larger proportion of infringing material on YouTube than on The Pirate Bay."
Source: Pirate Bay evidence given in their court case (yes, OK), cited by Ars Technica, 20th February 2009

86% of American students who have an MP3 player own an iPod

"92 percent of students said they currently own a digital media player, up from 87 percent a year ago. Of these students, a resounding 86 percent reported owning an Apple-branded iPod, an increase of 2 percent from the same survey conducted in the fall of last year."
Source: Piper Jaffray's 17th bi-annual teen survey, cited in AppleInsider, 8th April 2009. Piper Jaffray surveyed 600 students with an average age of 16.3 years, with a 54:46 male:female split.

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Pete Waterman only earned £11 in 'RickRoll' royalties from YouTube in 2008

"I co-wrote 'Never Gonna Give You Up', which Rick Astley performed in the eighties, and which must have been played more than 100 million times on YouTube - owner Google. My PRS for Music income in the year ended September 2008 was £11. ”
Source: Record Producer Pete Waterman on the site FairPlayForCreators.com, 24th March 2009

Facebook has >30m regular users via mobile phones

"There are more than 30 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices.
People that use Facebook on their mobile devices are almost 50% more active on Facebook than non-mobile users.
There are more than 150 mobile operators in 50 countries working to deploy and promote Facebook mobile products"
Source: Facebook Press Statistics, retrieved on 9th April 2009.
This shows rapid growth from 21m mobile users in January 2009, and 15m in November 2008

Facebook now has 200m active users

"General Growth
More than 200 million active users
More than 100 million users log on to Facebook at least once each day
More than two-thirds of Facebook users are outside of college
The fastest growing demographic is those 35 years old and older
User Engagement
Average user has 120 friends on the site
More than 3.5 billion minutes are spent on Facebook each day (worldwide)
More than 20 million users update their statuses at least once each day
More than 4 million users become fans of Pages each day
Applications
More than 850 million photos uploaded to the site each month
More than 8 million videos uploaded each month
More than 1 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) shared each week
More than 2.5 million events created each month
More than 25 million active user groups exist on the site
International Growth
More than 40 translations available on the site, with more than 50 in development
About 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States"
Source: Facebook Press Statistics, retrieved 9th April 2009.
For the growth levels, compare to this set, retrieved in late December 2008

Tap Tap Revenge is the most popular iPhone application

"Tapulous’s Tap Tap Revenge has the largest installed base among applications downloaded from the Apple App Store, with 32 percent of Apple App users having installed the game by February 2009, according to the comScore Apple App Store Report."
Source: comScore press release, 7th April 2009
The press release also lists the top 25 iPhone apps:

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More than 97% of emails are spam

"More than 97% of all emails sent over the net are unwanted, according to a Microsoft security report.
The emails are dominated by spam adverts for drugs, and general product pitches and often have malicious attachments."
Source: Microsoft security report, cited by the BBC News website, 8th April 2009

A typical website in the UK receives 40% of it's traffic from Google properties

The quote comes in an article about twitter:
"During March, 24.3% of Twitter’s UK Internet traffic came from Google properties, whereas for Facebook the figure was 34.6%. A typical website in the UK receives 39.9% of it traffic from Google properties [my emphasis], so Twitter is less reliant on the search giant for traffic than both Facebook and the UK average. However, Twitter’s largest source of UK Internet traffic is actually Facebook (which accounted for 18.2% of its traffic in March, compared to 15.4% from Google UK), presumably a result of the integration between Twitter updates and Facebook status feeds."
Source: Robin Goad, Hitwise, 6th April 2009

YouTube is projected to lose $470m in 2009 (Estimate)

"According to a Credit Suisse analyst, the most popular video Web site — owned by the richest Web site Google — will lose $470 million this year because it sells advertising only on a fraction of its pages."
& later:
"YouTube's sales will rise about 20 percent to $240.9 million this year, Wang estimated.
The company may spend $360.4 million for bandwidth to distribute its video, and $252.9 million to pay content owners for the rights to show their material, he wrote."
Source: Credit Suisse analyst Spencer Wang, cited by the Seattle Times, 4th April 2009

There were no platinum rated albums released in the US in Q1 2009

"No album specifically released during the first quarter has scored sales of one million, specifically in the United States. Additionally, only 39 releases scored first week sales north of 25,000.
On a broader level, year-over-year album sales are sharply down again, in the mid-teens percentages."
Source: DigitalMusicNews 1st April 2009 (But no, not an April Fool)

Music is the most popular online activity in China

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In China 83.7% of the online population access music online, compared to 78.5% accessing news, 75.3% using instant messaging, and 68.0% using search.
Source: Page 42, 23rd Statistical Survey Report on the Internet Development in China, CNNIC Jan 2009, published in English in March 2009

90.6% of Chinese internet users access the internet using a broadband connection

90.6% of Chinese internet users access the internet using a broadband connection, while 42.4% access using a Narrowband connection (clearly some use both).
Source: Page 34, 23rd Statistical Survey Report on the Internet Development in China, CNNIC Jan 2009, published in English in March 2009

38.8% of Chinese internet users access the internet from mobile phones

38.8% of Chinese internet users access the internet from mobile phones, compared to 88.4% from desktop machines, and 27.8% from laptops.
Source: Page 33, 23rd Statistical Survey Report on the Internet Development in China, CNNIC Jan 2009, published in English in March 2009

78.4% of Chinese internet users access the internet from home

78.4% of Chinese internet users access the internet from home, compared to 42.4% accessing from an internet cafe and 20.7% accessing from work.
Source: Page 32, 23rd Statistical Survey Report on the Internet Development in China, CNNIC Jan 2009, published in English in March 2009