Worldwide sales of pirated music CDs rose by almost 50% in 2001, with China, Russia, Brazil, Indonesia and Mexico leading the trend, according to a global recording industry trade group.
Sales of pirate discs rose to 950 million last year from 640 million a year earlier, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) said.
With CDs and cassettes combined, the group said, two out of every five recordings sold worldwide is an illegal copy, with 1.9 million bogus CDs and cassettes flooding global markets.
According to the group, music piracy accounted for some $4.3 billion last year. That was only a slight increase in value from $4.2 billion in 2000, because of 'sharply falling prices of pirate CD-R discs,' the organisation said.
The group said that illegal music sales now outnumber legal music sales in 25 countries - predominantly developing markets. The group called for a global crackdown on illegal CD copying.
'Tolerance of piracy fosters lawlessness and tax evasion,' said IFPI member Rick Dobbis, who is also president of Sony Music International.
Dobbis said pirating CDs cuts off local record sellers from earnings of the legal distribution chain. 'Some of the hardest hit victims of this growing problem are local economies,' he said. 'Owners of local record stores, CD plant workers, marketing, promotion and distribution people, and workers from every aspect of the complex business of making and distributing music are all affected.'
The industry group said CD pirating is now equally divided between large-scale operations and smaller garage-based producers.
According to the report, China tops the list of illegal sales, with 90% of music sales being fake, followed by Indonesia (85%), Russia (65%), Mexico (60%) and Brazil (55%). The IFPI said that South Asia remains the hub of pirate CD manufacturing. Seven out of 10 illegal disks come from the region, the group reported.
In April, the London-based group reported that the global music market fell 5% in value and saw a 6.5% drop in unit sales in 2001. The IFPI argues that drop is due to pirating.
The IFPI is affiliated with the Recording Industry Association of America, the Washington-based trade group waging legal battles on behalf of the recording industry against Internet music sites. The RIAA succeeded in shutting down the pioneering digital music swapping site Napster last year on charges of wholesale copyright infringement.
