AUSTRALIA'S music industry had an off-key 2009, with the local arms of all four major record companies taking hits to their bottom lines.

Three of the four - EMI Group (Australia), Warner Music Australia and Universal Music Australia - recorded losses while Sony Music Entertainment Australia saw its profit tumble by three quarters, company accounts filed with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission showed.

The industry has been under pressure, with sales and margins on compact discs under pressure as consumers switch to lower-cost digital downloads.

Interestingly, ARIA's 2009 wholesale figures press release [ARIA.com.au, PDF] talks highly of the year, indicating that the industry is on the way up and that digital sales are more than filling the gap created by lower CD sales:

Sales of physical product continued to decline across last year, although the decline in the volume of CD album sales was slight (less than 1%) and was more than offset by the increase in digital album sales.

So which is it?

Perhaps ARIA's figures include independent releases, and if their sales figures were filtered only to the big-four they may show that digital sales are not "more than offseting" the decline in physical sales.

On a related note I popped into JB HiFi today. Again they're having a $9.95 CD sale, but with the added bonus of buy 2 and get one 3 (so 3 albums for less than $20). The majority of the CDs included in this sale are best-ofs, although there are many new albums in there including both Lily Allen CDs.

Why are these CDs so cheap? At what point does a record company decide that the CD is no longer to be sold at $20 and will now be sold at $10?

These days new albums today are almost universally $19.95. Independents tend to be a little more expensive ($23 for example). The special edition of Soulfly's "Omen" I bought today was only $23.99.

Meanwhile, three CDs I bought recently from an independent US based website cost me $20 each, including postage.

The Commonwealth Consumer Affairs Advisory Council (CCAAC) is conducting a review into ticket onselling and its impact on consumers.

The review is accepting public submissions until Friday, 23 July 2010. Electronic submissions are accepted (in Word or RTF format).

I'm not 100% convinced scalping is entirely to blame for shows selling out in minutes. It is horribly frustrating to see a show sell out before you can get a ticket, then see tickets for sale on eBay, but I haven't seen any numbers on exactly how many tickets are sold to scalpers.

I still feel some kind of pre-registration for interest in tickets is a better solution to the 9am internet smashing surge on the various ticketplacething.coms of the world.

Either way, it is likely that laws will be put in place to will prevent reselling of tickets for more than 10% of face value, which is currently the case in Queensland. Maybe it should be 5%? Or "cost of postage"?

After all, 10% of $100+ is still a fair chunk of change.