PWC studies the present for the future and finds that downloads and phones are where it's at

Variety.com has the press release from PricewaterhouseCoopers

PWC says that digital delivery wil be 37% or more of all music sold by 2009--that's just four years away.

Consider the status of digital music four years ago; consider the number of homes with broadband four years ago (less than 10%); consider the number of portable digital music players four years ago (hardly any); consider the price of computing power four years ago (computers routinely shipped with 20gig hard drives); consider the economy four years ago (headed downward towards a recession that would be spiked by 9/11); consider mobile phone technology or even PDA technology four years ago.

Imagine then, if you actually paid PWC for this report that basically gave you the obvious. Imagine then, what PWC was reporting in 2001 and what sort of predictions they were making. Nobody--not PWC, that's for sure--foresaw the success of the iPod or iTunes. But combine the changing paradigm (digital delivery being accepted as the norm) with lower computing costs, greater broadband penetration, and a hungry market for portability and it's pretty obvious that PWC is erring on the conservative side with a figure of 37%.