Record sales increase 12% last year

Domestic sales of records reached 205.62 billion won last year, up 12% from 1999.

However, the sales volume of the domestic record market, which takes into account online expenses and royalty payments for imports in its record sales figures, came to 410.4 billion won last year, a mere 8% increase from the previous year.

According to statistics for 2000 presented to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism by the Recording Industry Association of Korea Wednesday, total production of records, including Korean pop song, foreign popular music and classical music, came to 28.328 million copies last year, up 8.9% from 25.989 million copies the previous year.

By type of recording, compact disks (CDs) accounted for 48% of the total with 13.598 million sold, and cassette tapes took up the remaining 52% with 14.73 million copies.

By genre, Korean pop song records accounted for 75%, foreign popular music records, 20%, and classical music records 5%.