精讀金融時報：數(shù)字音樂下載量下滑 流媒體時代到來？
滬江小編：對于商界精英們來說，閱讀《金融時報》（Financial Times）幾乎成了每天的必修課。FT文章以分析為主，邏輯嚴(yán)密，經(jīng)常被各類考試用作考題。非常適合學(xué)習(xí)BEC、TOEIC、GRE、GMAT的考生來閱讀、練習(xí)。滬江小編精選FT上的雙語文章，配上獨家的學(xué)習(xí)指南，從詞匯、短語、句式、文化、翻譯等多方面來解讀，長期堅持，相信會對英語學(xué)習(xí)有所幫助。
原文閱讀：數(shù)字音樂銷售量下滑 流媒體時代到來？
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.
學(xué)習(xí)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
小編注：label是我們非常熟悉的單詞，作名詞它有“標(biāo)簽、標(biāo)記、綽號”的意思，但是在音樂領(lǐng)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
小編注：balloon to表示“猛增至”，后面一般接數(shù)值。balloon本身可以作及物動詞,直接說sth. ballooned。文中還出現(xiàn)了jump to, 也表示“猛增至”的意思。除了balloon和jump, 表示激增的單詞和短語還有surge、skyrocket（主要指價格）和shoot up等，所以，下次再提到增長、猛增，別只想到increase哦！
3. Sentence of the day
小編注：從該句中，我們可以學(xué)習(xí)到有關(guān)數(shù)字變動的表達方法。從某個數(shù)值變?yōu)榱硪粋€數(shù)值，在英語中用from… to… 來表達，句中還可以加入百分比變動，注意在句中的順序。
4. Cultural point of the day
流媒體：流媒體是指以流的方式在網(wǎng)絡(luò)中傳輸音頻、視頻和多媒體文件的形式。 流媒體文件格式是支持采用流式傳輸及播放的媒體格式。流式傳輸方式是將視頻和音頻等多媒體文件經(jīng)過特殊的壓縮方式分成一個個壓縮包，由服務(wù)器向用戶計算機連續(xù)、實時傳送。在采用流式傳輸方式的系統(tǒng)中，用戶不必像非流式播放那樣等到整個文件全部下載完畢后才能看到當(dāng)中的內(nèi)容，而是只需要經(jīng)過幾秒鐘或幾十秒的啟動延時即可在用戶計算機上利用相應(yīng)的播放器對壓縮的視頻或音頻等流式媒體文件進行播放，剩余的部分將繼續(xù)進行下載，直至播放完畢。
5.Translation of the day
小編注：這句話中的“turning up the volume on”原意是將音量開大，在語境中顯然有衍生意義，不宜直譯，需結(jié)合上下文進行推斷，美國人民聽到所列歌手的歌都會開大音量，足見他們很喜歡這些歌手，可以翻譯為這些歌手廣受歡迎。