European Labels Hope Piracy Succumbs to Digital Services

Apple, Napster, Sony selling digital music in Europe. - The services are entering a market that has been damaged more by file-sharing than even the United States. In Germany, a country where illegal song-swapping and pirate CD's have reached epidemic proportions, sales in 2003 fell to $2 billion, a 20 percent decline from the previous year. Music sales in France fell 14 percent last year, and Belgium, Denmark, Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Sweden and Switzerland all registered drops in double-digit percentages as well.