Chris Anderson of the Long Tail blog has neatly summarized a few media statistics by meduim (which is the message). For example, music sales where down 21% last year. So what does this mean? Who knows, but in conjunction with this smackdown of an article by Michael Geist entitled, Piercing the peer–to–peer myths: An examination of the Canadian experience it might mean that the media industry is changing. That confirmed, why is the media industry changing? Read Geists paper.

Anyway, back to the stats:

• Music: sales last year were down 21% from their peak in 1999
• Television: network TV’s audience share has fallen by a third since 1985
• Radio: listenership is at a 27-year low
• Newspapers: circulation peaked in 1987, and the decline is accelerating
• Magazines: total circulation peaked in 2000 and is now back to 1994 levels (but a few premier titles are bucking the trend!)
• Books: sales growth is lagging the economy as whole
• Movies: 2004 was another record year, both for theaters and DVDs
• Videogames: even in the last year of this generation of consoles, sales hit a new record
• Web: online ads will grow 30% this year, breaking $10 billion (5.4% of all advertising)
  

Source: Media Meltdown