Global music sales plummet

The global music market has fallen by five per cent because more people are recording music free off the internet, it emerged today.

The fall in sales over the last 12 months comes despite stronger than ever worldwide demand for recorded music.

Britain and France are the only two major markets to have bucked the trend with robust sales of domestic artists in 2001. The figures were published by the International Federation of

the Phonographic Industry, whose chairman Jay Berman blamed "mass copying and piracy, competition from other products and economic downturn".