The expert's view
From Sarah Roberts, spokeswoman for the BPI
MP3 is a format in its own right, so the fact people choose to download a track rather than going out and physically buying a product is the same thing - they're getting the music.
If that's the way people want to access music, that's the way it will be offered to them. There has been talk of a download chart which the official charts will be trialling later this year, with a view to it being incorporated into the overall singles chart next year. It's evolution really. When I was a kid, I bought 7in records.
Now you buy CDs and, increasingly, you can download - which is what people are doing. Forester, a research company, reckons that a third of all music sales will be via downloads within the next five years.
