Here's news the music industry should be singing about: Global recorded music revenue rose an estimated 0.3 percent last year to $16.5 billion. That tiny uptick may not seem like much, the last time music industry revenue rose at all, it was 1999.
Right now, four out of five digital music downloads are illegal, and if you think the only losers in that equation are greedy record label execs and wealthy superstars who can afford it, you're not hearing the whole story.
At least 5.2 million copies of Activision Blizzard's Call of Duty: Black Ops were illegally downloaded between its Nov. 9 release and the end of 2010. All told, more than 19 million people illegally downloaded five of the top-selling games of 2010. As broadband spreads, so does the piracy.