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defrogITEM: Nielsen SoundScan has handed in its year-end results for the music business.
The good news: hometaping downloading isn’t killing music after all.
The bad news: it is, however, killing the album as a music format.
Well, maybe. It’s a mixed bag of stats for 2008. Overall, if you factor in all music items purchased (CDs, downloads, music videos, etc) overall sales of music were up 10%. Sales of digital music downloads were up 27%, and broke the 1-billion-song threshold for the first time ever.
On the other hand, CD sales dropped almost 20% in 2008 year-on-year, and album sales overall were down around 14%, even when you factor in digital albums. I’d like to think this could be easily explained by the fact that the biggest albums of the year were by Lil Wayne, Coldplay and Taylor Swift. But I know better.
I have mixed feelings about trends like this. I like the album format just fine – they serve as either a way to group songs under a single theme (even if it’s not a clearly defined concept album), or at least to serve as mile markers in a given artist’s career (the garage years, the psychedelic years, the rehab years, the back-to-basics years, etc).
On the other hand, I have lots of CDs with only one or two good songs on them, and I can see the value of paying only for what you like. I also remember when I interviewed Nile Rodgers a couple of years ago and asked him what he thought of this, and he pointed out that the music business started out as being driven by songs, not albums, so in a sense digital is taking the industry back to its roots.
In a way, it doesn’t matter too much, in that I think many artists will continue to write and record songs in batches instead of releasing songs as they go, so the option will always be there.
However, there’s also the question of the future of physical media. I like going to record stores and digging around for hidden gems. But that’s because I’m old. (That, and we don’t get iTunes in Hong Kong, and even if we did, I wouldn’t download tracks from them, and won’t until they remove the DRM first.)
The numbers suggest that music stores are on the decline. According to Nielsen, chain music stores accounted for a third of CD sales in 2008 (compared to 48% in 2004), which is why even Sonic Youth is releasing CDs through Starbucks these days. The New York Press has already started a Virgin Megastore Death Watch, predicting its demise (at least in Union Square) later this year.
On the other hand, vinyl records (remember those?) are still for sale. I mean NEW ones. 1.9 million of them were sold in 2008 – a million more than last year, and the highest number since SoundScan started keeping in count in 1991. I think Radiohead accounts for something like 80% of them, but still, that’s impressive for a format declared dead over 15 years ago.
So maybe there’s still plenty of life in CDs and music stores – at least for cranky old bastards like me. Meanwhile, maybe the RIAA will feel confident enough about the future of digital music to stop treating us all like potential criminals.
Or perhaps not.
Sold out,
This is dF
BONUS TRACK:
TOP TEN BEST ALBUMS IN CORPORATE AMERICA (2008)
1. Lil Wayne, Tha Carter III (Ca$h Money/Univer$al) 2.88 million units sold
2. Coldplay, Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friend$ (Capitol) 2.15 million units sold
3. Taylor $wift, Fearle$$ (Big Machine) 2.11 million units sold
4. Kid Rock, Rock N Roll Jesu$ (Atlantic) 2 million units sold
5. AC/DC, Black Ice (Columbia) 1.92 million units sold
6. Taylor $wift, Taylor $wift (Big Machine) 1.6 million units sold
7. Metallica, Death Magnetic (Warner Bros) 1.57 million units sold
8. T.I., Paper Trail (Grand Hu$tle/Atlantic) 1.52 million units sold
9. Jack John$on, $leep Through the $tatic (Bru$hfire/Univer$al) 1.5 million units sold
10. Beyonce, I Am ... $asha Fierce (Mu$ic World/Columbia) 1.46 million units sold
Source: Nielsen SoundScan
The good news: home
The bad news: it is, however, killing the album as a music format.
Well, maybe. It’s a mixed bag of stats for 2008. Overall, if you factor in all music items purchased (CDs, downloads, music videos, etc) overall sales of music were up 10%. Sales of digital music downloads were up 27%, and broke the 1-billion-song threshold for the first time ever.
On the other hand, CD sales dropped almost 20% in 2008 year-on-year, and album sales overall were down around 14%, even when you factor in digital albums. I’d like to think this could be easily explained by the fact that the biggest albums of the year were by Lil Wayne, Coldplay and Taylor Swift. But I know better.
I have mixed feelings about trends like this. I like the album format just fine – they serve as either a way to group songs under a single theme (even if it’s not a clearly defined concept album), or at least to serve as mile markers in a given artist’s career (the garage years, the psychedelic years, the rehab years, the back-to-basics years, etc).
On the other hand, I have lots of CDs with only one or two good songs on them, and I can see the value of paying only for what you like. I also remember when I interviewed Nile Rodgers a couple of years ago and asked him what he thought of this, and he pointed out that the music business started out as being driven by songs, not albums, so in a sense digital is taking the industry back to its roots.
In a way, it doesn’t matter too much, in that I think many artists will continue to write and record songs in batches instead of releasing songs as they go, so the option will always be there.
However, there’s also the question of the future of physical media. I like going to record stores and digging around for hidden gems. But that’s because I’m old. (That, and we don’t get iTunes in Hong Kong, and even if we did, I wouldn’t download tracks from them, and won’t until they remove the DRM first.)
The numbers suggest that music stores are on the decline. According to Nielsen, chain music stores accounted for a third of CD sales in 2008 (compared to 48% in 2004), which is why even Sonic Youth is releasing CDs through Starbucks these days. The New York Press has already started a Virgin Megastore Death Watch, predicting its demise (at least in Union Square) later this year.
On the other hand, vinyl records (remember those?) are still for sale. I mean NEW ones. 1.9 million of them were sold in 2008 – a million more than last year, and the highest number since SoundScan started keeping in count in 1991. I think Radiohead accounts for something like 80% of them, but still, that’s impressive for a format declared dead over 15 years ago.
So maybe there’s still plenty of life in CDs and music stores – at least for cranky old bastards like me. Meanwhile, maybe the RIAA will feel confident enough about the future of digital music to stop treating us all like potential criminals.
Or perhaps not.
Sold out,
This is dF
BONUS TRACK:
TOP TEN BEST ALBUMS IN CORPORATE AMERICA (2008)
1. Lil Wayne, Tha Carter III (Ca$h Money/Univer$al) 2.88 million units sold
2. Coldplay, Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friend$ (Capitol) 2.15 million units sold
3. Taylor $wift, Fearle$$ (Big Machine) 2.11 million units sold
4. Kid Rock, Rock N Roll Jesu$ (Atlantic) 2 million units sold
5. AC/DC, Black Ice (Columbia) 1.92 million units sold
6. Taylor $wift, Taylor $wift (Big Machine) 1.6 million units sold
7. Metallica, Death Magnetic (Warner Bros) 1.57 million units sold
8. T.I., Paper Trail (Grand Hu$tle/Atlantic) 1.52 million units sold
9. Jack John$on, $leep Through the $tatic (Bru$hfire/Univer$al) 1.5 million units sold
10. Beyonce, I Am ... $asha Fierce (Mu$ic World/Columbia) 1.46 million units sold
Source: Nielsen SoundScan
