沪江小编：对于商界精英们来说，阅读《金融时报》（Financial Times）几乎成了每天的必修课。FT文章以分析为主，逻辑严密，经常被各类考试用作考题。非常适合学习BEC、TOEIC、GRE、GMAT的考生来阅读、练习。沪江小编精选FT上的双语文章，配上独家的学习指南，从词汇、短语、句式、文化、翻译等多方面来解读，长期坚持，相信会对英语学习有所帮助。

原文阅读：数字音乐销售量下滑 流媒体时代到来？

Americans are turning up the volume on Katy Perry, Pharrell Williams and Beyoncé, but as they stream ever more of the artists’ songs and videos their reluctance to buy music is extending from CDs to digital downloads.

Digital album sales dropped 11.6 per cent to 53.8m in the first half of the year, from 60.8m in the same period in 2013, according to Nielsen SoundScan, while sales of individual digital tracks sank 13 per cent to 593.6m from 682.2m.

Last year marked the first time digital downloads fell since Apple’s iTunes store launched in 2003, as streaming music services such as Spotify, Rdio and Pandora captured ears.

In the first six months of 2014, combined audio and video streaming jumped 42 per cent to 70.3bn streams from 49.5bn last year.

“Streaming continues to be an increasingly significant portion of the music industry,” said David Bakula of Nielsen Entertainment. He said the growth of streaming, coupled with a 40 per cent jump in sales of vinyl albums, “shows interest in buying and consuming music continues to be robust, with two very distinct segments of the industry expanding substantially.”

Vinyl sales represent a small sliver of the industry, however, at 4m copies sold from January to June – just 3 per cent of all album sales.

The acceleration in the shift to streaming is putting digital downloads on a downward trajectory approaching the double-digit annual declines in CD sales seen from 2007 to 2011.

Total album sales – physical and digital – have dropped 14.9 per cent so far this year to 120.9m from 142m. CD sales were down 19.6 per cent to 62.9m after a more moderate 14.5 per cent decline in 2013.

With streaming revenues still far lower than those generated by digital and CD sales, many in the industry are questioning – as they did during the rise of iTunes – whether artists and labels can make enough money from the new format to keep making new music.

The rise of digital subscription services such as Spotify and Beats, recently acquired by Apple for $3bn, offers some hope, however. The number of paying customers has ballooned to 28m last year from 8m in 2010, with subscription revenues reaching $1.11bn, and some of the largest technology and media companies are investing in the services.

Google bought Songza, which allows users to make customised playlists, for a reported $39m this week. Last month, Amazon launched music streaming as a part of its Prime subscription bundle.

The biggest selling album in the period – in physical and digital formats – was the soundtrack to Disney’s animated hit, Frozen, followed by a Beyoncé album launched last year through a heavily promoted exclusive deal with iTunes.

学习指南：
1. Word of the day

label: You can refer to a company that produces and sells CDs as a particular label 唱片公司

小编注：label是我们非常熟悉的单词，作名词它有“标签、标记、绰号”的意思，但是在音乐领域，它就指的是唱片公司了。

2. Phrase of the day

balloon to: When something balloons, it increases rapidly in amount. 猛增至

小编注：balloon to表示“猛增至”，后面一般接数值。balloon本身可以作及物动词,直接说sth. ballooned。文中还出现了jump to, 也表示“猛增至”的意思。除了balloon和jump, 表示激增的单词和短语还有surge、skyrocket（主要指价格）和shoot up等，所以，下次再提到增长、猛增，别只想到increase哦！

3. Sentence of the day

小编注：从该句中，我们可以学习到有关数字变动的表达方法。从某个数值变为另一个数值，在英语中用from… to… 来表达，句中还可以加入百分比变动，注意在句中的顺序。

4. Cultural point of the day

流媒体：流媒体是指以流的方式在网络中传输音频、视频和多媒体文件的形式。 流媒体文件格式是支持采用流式传输及播放的媒体格式。流式传输方式是将视频和音频等多媒体文件经过特殊的压缩方式分成一个个压缩包，由服务器向用户计算机连续、实时传送。在采用流式传输方式的系统中，用户不必像非流式播放那样等到整个文件全部下载完毕后才能看到当中的内容，而是只需要经过几秒钟或几十秒的启动延时即可在用户计算机上利用相应的播放器对压缩的视频或音频等流式媒体文件进行播放，剩余的部分将继续进行下载，直至播放完毕。

5.Translation of the day

小编注：这句话中的“turning up the volume on”原意是将音量开大，在语境中显然有衍生意义，不宜直译，需结合上下文进行推断，美国人民听到所列歌手的歌都会开大音量，足见他们很喜欢这些歌手，可以翻译为这些歌手广受欢迎。

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