eMarketer has been crunching some numbers to predict US spending on recorded music for the next four years, and has come up with this forecast: in 2013, total spend will be $5.52 billion – down from $8.4 billion in 2008 – but that of that $5.52 billion, 82.6% will be digital rather than physical.

In fact, by 2013, eMarketer believes US consumers will be spending just $0.96 billion on physical music. “Online will experience healthy growth, mobile will trend slightly downward, and physical will continue to plummet at accelerating rates,” says senior analyst Paul Verna.

“Unfortunately, the sum of online and mobile will not compensate for losses in physical, but it will slow down the rate of those losses to a 2.9% drop in 2013.”