Digital Europe: Diversity and Opportunity - Let's Go Connected

Historically, expenditure devoted to cultural products has risen along withdisposable income across the EU27 Member States. However, with respect toaudiovisual products, the sharp decline of recorded music sales during thephysical-to-digital transition, partly due to piracy, has ‘decoupled’ expenditurefrom per capita disposable income trends. Between 2000 and 2010, per capitaincome rose by 30%, while IFPI reports that total trade revenues from recordedmusic sales in the European Economic Area (EEA) fell by 51%. In addition, thedecline in the consumption of newspapers has also decoupled expenditure fromper capita disposable income trends.Accordingly, a key enabler of the development of the market for digital culturalproducts is economic growth, which raises per capita income and fosters the skills,literacy and leisure time to consume cultural products. There are other enabler,which we discuss in more detail later in this report: the multiplication anddevelopment of licensed content services is important and action against piracy isalso required, as this is a well-known and significant factor behind recorded musicsales decline, and also affects films and ebooks.7 | 53 Let’s Go Connected 8 May 2012