The world music market fell 10 percent in 2007, faster than in 2006, but digital music sales continued to soar, rising 40 percent, according to figures released by the universal Federation of the Phonographic Industry. The organization represents the recording industry in 75 countries.

The strong global sales of digital subject matter might be good news for Apple, the dominant purveyor of online music, but it wasn’t decent to offset the rapid fall in CD sales, the IFPI said.

Online sales now explanation for 15 percent of the global market, the IPFI said, up from 10 percent a year ago and zero in 2003. Even more impressive, digital sales compose up 30 percent of the U.S. market.

Focus on ISPs

“Apple is clearly one of the main beneficiaries of that trend. But piracy is clearly still rampant and has had an effect on CD sales,” said Tim Bajarin, principal analyst with Creative Strategies.

The industry responded to the numbers

by focusing on piracy, as it has since P2P (peer-to-peer) networking first arised with Napster a decade ago. The latest strategy is to try to defeat piracy at the network level by calling on World Wide Web service providers to take action against customers who repeatedly violate the law.

The industry was encouraged recently when French President Nicolas Sarkozy moved to block Web access to frequent illegal downloaders.

ISP Interest Growing

“It is hard to persuade anyone to be a pioneer, but what we have with the French government is a very energetic government understanding how urgent the French music industry is to French business and culture,” IFPI Chief Executive John Kennedy told Reuters. “That leadership shows that it’s not as dreadful or as problematic as folks think.”

And in Belgium, a court ordered a service provider to block illegal file sharing; that decision is on appeal. In the United States, AT&T…

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