[microtherion]

Eyeballing the chart, it looks like revenue from physical media dropped by about $15B since 1999, while digital revenue increased to about $3B in that time (and if the chart represents nominal, rather than inflation adjusted, dollar amounts, as is likely, the situation is even worse).

Not hard to see why the RIAA is less than jubilant about the situation. Of course $5B of that revenue disappeared before iTunes even got under way, so I don’t think PAID digital downloads are that much to blame for the decline.