Record companies losing money since late 1990's

The Recording Industry Association of America’s 2002 Yearend Statistics demonstrate a steady decline in both CD production and sales. As we can see from the chart, the manufacture and shipment of physical CD’s decreased by 8.9% from 2001-2002, as a result of a loss of 6.7% in sales. This was largely due to new computer technology that sparked an increase in music piracy such as CD burning. The climbing popularity of digital downloading from illegal software such as Napster was also a highly contributing factor. Napster was hosting approximately 4 million users per day until its demise in 2001, and played a significant role in the decline of record sales during this period.