“In a dramatic acceleration of the seven-year sales decline that has battered the music industry, compact-disc sales for the first three months of this year plunged 20% from a year earlier, the latest sign of the seismic shift in the way consumers acquire music,” Ethan Smith reports for The Wall Street Journal.
“The sharp slide in sales of CDs, which still account for more than 85% of music sold, has far eclipsed the growth in sales of digital downloads, which were supposed to have been the industry’s salvation,” Smith reports.
Smith reports, “In recent weeks, the music industry has posted some of the weakest sales it has ever recorded. This year has already seen the two lowest-selling No. 1 albums since Nielsen SoundScan, which tracks music sales, was launched in 1991. One week, ‘American Idol’ runner-up Chris Daughtry’s rock band sold just 65,000 copies of its chart-topping album; another week, the ‘Dreamgirls’ movie soundtrack sold a mere 60,000. As recently as 2005, there were many weeks when such tallies wouldn’t have been enough to crack the top 30 sellers. In prior years, it wasn’t uncommon for a No. 1 record to sell 500,000 or 600,000 copies a week.”
“The music industry has been banking on the rise of digital music to compensate for inevitable drops in sales of CDs. Apple’s 2003 launch of its iTunes Store was greeted as a new day in music retailing, one that would allow fans to conveniently and quickly snap up large amounts of music from limitless virtual shelves,” Smith reports. “It hasn’t worked out that way — at least so far. Digital sales of individual songs this year have risen 54% from a year earlier to 173.4 million, according to Nielsen SoundScan. But that’s nowhere near enough to offset the 20% decline from a year ago in CD sales to 81.5 million units.”
Smith continues, “Meanwhile, with music sales sliding for the first time even at some big-box chains, Best Buy has been quietly reducing the floor space it dedicates to music, according to music-distribution executives. Whether Wal-Mart and others will follow suit isn’t clear, but if they do it could spell more trouble for the record companies. The big-box chains already stocked far fewer titles than did the fading specialty retailers. As a result, it is harder for consumers to find and purchase older titles in stores.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Not to sound like a broken record, but when consumers have the ability to buy only the good tunes and are no longer forced to buy a CD full of filler crap, where’s the surprise in these numbers and trends? Hey, I like that song! Now it costs 99-cents instead of the $15 for the full CD of yesteryear. There’s a main reason for the sales decline. Here’s an idea: make more good songs and less bad ones (and stop with the DRM B.S. and think about upping the audio quality for legal online tracks while you’re at it) and you’ll probably sell more songs.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Tommy Boy” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
62% of music industry execs think eliminating DRM would increase music download sales – February 14, 2007
Disney film sales via Apple’s iTunes Store rise sharply; over 1.3 million sold in first three months – February 02, 2007
Apple’s iTunes Store passes two billion songs milestone; 50m TV shows & over 1.3m movies sold – January 09, 2007
Apple iTunes visits skyrocket 413% on Christmas Day – December 27, 2006
comScore: Apple iTunes sales are surging; revenue grew 84% during first 3 quarters of 2006 – December 14, 2006
Piper Jaffray: Apple iTunes Store sales show strong year-over-year growth – December 13, 2006
Warner’s Middlebronfman sees strong growth from iTunes Store sales – December 01, 2006
“…my god, when Idol winners are suddenly the biggest music sellers out there, you have a problem.”
Well said! Idol winners… Sheeesh! American Idol is a bloody popularity contest!
Also, who the hell honestly thinks MDN’s take has any validity whatsoever? I don’t know about you people, but the albums I bought years ago were amazing and had no “filler”. With today’s paradigm shift in the iTMS, I still buy full albums 99% of the time. It’s very rare that I buy just one song, and back in tha day, I’d just record that one song off the radio rather than buy a CD form a band I didn’t really like all that much. The idea that being able to buy one song is plummeting the sales of the music business as much as 20% is ludicrous.
I buy some tracks form iTunes. I also occasionally search for and download hard-to-find tracks from limewire (gasp).
But I also purchased four CDs last week, all older: Herbie Hancock-Headhunters, Toto-Toto IV, Toto-Fahrenheit, and Toto-The Seventh One. @Georgy Porgy — Long Live Jeff Porcaro.
I, too, definitely hear a difference between a track encoded at 128K and one encoded at 192 or 256K. I’m currently ripping my CDs as AAC at 256K.
MW lived — must mean Jeff, how do they do that? sonnovabeench
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The problem is not that “musicians” make crap. The problem is that the “music business” is just that. A music business. It’s about selling music. And, really, it has very little to do with music at all.
It’s a ride that could only last for so long, and that ride is coming to an end.
When music is made by musicians again (instead of by producers), we’ll enjoy good sounds, musicians will make money proportionate to what they’re creating, and producers will be partners rather than dictators and will cease to be millionaires.
‘The idea that being able to buy one song is plummeting the sales of the music business as much as 20% is ludicrous.’
I think Ludacris is plummeting the idea of music
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G-Spank,
Seriously, how old are you? You can’t base what’s happening on your personal likes or dislikes. Most people I know, including myself, now buy the songs we like, not whole albums full of filler.
I agree with MDN’s take 100%. So would 20 or so other people I know.
The only one ludicrous here is you, for thinking that you represent the world.
You got one thing right at least: “I don’t know about you people.” That’s a fact!
You asked for honesty, so go fuck yourself. Nobody cares how stupidly you buy your shitty music or what you think in your isolated little world of one.
I agree with MDN’s take.
that today’s youth are horribly apathetic (that’s a separate issue), though certain groups achieved incredible sales numbers in reissue land, in their day, punk records, political records of any kind, didn’t sell for shit. Also, if one looks at the exponential growth of music sales over the last thirty tears or so, albums debuting at number one selling millions of copies is a fairly recent phenomenon and just may have been a fluke. Before the internet people listened to the radio to enjoy music; an awful lot of them didn’t buy albums at all.
Yeah, G-Spank has been disconnected from reality on many issues–this is just the latest.
Nothing personal, G-man. Just get real!
I believe the big growth in the music business occurred in the 80’s, back when we had plenty of enjoyable music (along w/much cr*p, admittedly). Older people have been blaming the youth for apathy since at least the 70’s, but that’s beside the point.
Today’s music just plain s*cks–how long have we been stuck on the stale rap sound, for example?
Piracy Rules!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! GOD DAMN!!!!!
There have always been more bad albums than good and more filler tracks than worthy hits. Pull up the charts from 10-20-40 years ago and you’ll see this is true. And millionaire producers are nothing new but they used to be invisible.
Issue #1 – Piracy. As a poster said above people want to get stuff for free so they take it. I don’t want to start a flame war about the legality and morality of downloading tracks but it is reasonable to argue that music sales are down in part because consumers are acquiring music without paying for it.
Issue #2 – The lack of broad-based superstars. Once upon a time there were artists who appealed across age groups, ethnic groups and genders. Paul Simon, Springsteen, Neil Diamond and Michael (Thriller) Jackson are the type of stars that paid for the whole parade because individuals of every stripe consumed their stuff. Call it crap if you want but people bought it. Today’s market is so fragmented that no matter who you’re into you’re likely to think most of the Top 10/20/50 is s**t.
The industry is going full-circle. Once upon a time record sales were all about the singles and albums were an afterthought. A hit would have a crappy B-side track and those tracks ended up on the albums. With the Beach Boys and Beatles there was a new album-driven model which took over and it’s only now that singles are once again becoming the driving force.
2 cents poorer
As a card-carrying “old fart” I gotta say I think one of the reasons for the decline is less good music. Yeah, yeah – lotta rap and hip-hop out there but, well, it isn’t that appealing to me, and I have the disposable income to buy this stuff. Like MDN said, I can cherry pick the line now, buy the song I want and leave the crap behind. It’s gonna have an impact. Oh, yeah, I was a real hipster once – even used to be on the air back in the day. So get off my lawn you kids!
I like Toby have Etymotic earphones and have over 1000 CDs and 2000 Vinyl records. I’m a completist, so I tend to buy a whole back catalogue of someone if I like their stuff.
In the old days, when I first started to collect music, I always bought a whole album rather than a single. It was the joy of discovering what else the artist had done, even if not everything on their album was as good as the single, however often there were other fabulous songs that just didn’t get radio airplay.
I would happily buy all of my music from iTunes if it were available in lossless format (which I know isn’t solely due to DRM). I need my music quality to be high. 128Kbps isn’t sufficient, so I buy CDs and rip them myself in Apple Lossless.
I also still prefer to buy full albums rather than singles. I tend not to listen to top 40 stuff, so filler isn’t an issue. I listen to a mixture of indie, alternative, classical, jazz and other genres where music quality and recording quality are of paramount interest to the artist in the first place. However I completely agree that a lot of the music churned out by the big labels for the masses is crappy and contains formulaic singles and filler, which again is why I don’t buy it at all.
If I buy from iTunes, it is to grab a track from an artist whos CDs are no longer available in the store and for nostalgia sake I want get that old track I heard when I was a kid, but never owned the vinyl of.
Albums debuting with millions of units is as much a function of promotion as quality or even popularity. A large portion of week 1 sales are purchased by the labels and retailers.
And one more thing…
I always prefer to pay for my music. I’m not interested in pirating it. I want to support the artist (not the record company). I may well be in the minority, but that’s how I choose to operate.
The MDN take is absolutely correct. If I like a song, I buy just one song on the iTunes Store. As the digital music business (mostly Apple’s business) continues to build, artists will no longer need to produce “albums.” They can just produce songs. This will probably improve the overall quality of music, because the artists can focus on creating great songs, not a few great songs with mostly garbage filler material for albums.
People have always had the ability to buy singles. 45 rpm’s were around for the begining of the whole record sale business.
I agree with MacRaven, Cpt. Obvious and Rancher. The industry is more interested in how an artist LOOKS rather than the SOUND. Like the musician Christoper Cross (Sailing, Ride Like the Wind) said in a music interview, he wasn’t handsome enough for MTV and that was the end of him. Like most things in the world now, it’s all surface “bling” and no substance.
It’s poor music that is driving the sales down. There aren’t musical CRAFTSMEN, ARTISTS, and true MUSICIANS like the Beatles, Stones, Beach Boys, Genesis, Zepplin, Kiss, Clapton and whatever band he was in. ZZ Top. Many not cover boy materal or even ugly as sin but freakin’ talented to the max. Out of that bunch, the Beatles were the luckies to be both mega talented, pretty boys, AND fun to watch and interview, and all contributed to their mega-success.
Nothing worth buying.
” …it is reasonable to argue that music sales are down in part because consumers are acquiring music without paying for it.”
In the days of vinyl, people would record to tape, or they would simply share and trade their records.
There has always been an element of free music acquisition by consumers, so I’m thinking this is not a factor.
Crap music = Crap sales.
The truth? can you handle it?
Bulk loaded iPods given/sold to friends who normally would buy cd’s to play instead.
Just imagine each geek having 5-6 new girlfriends.
Now you know.
1. STOP treating your PAYING customers as thieves! Lose DRM.
2. START offering your customers compelling reason to buy music. Better content, more features, better digital quality downloads.
3. END the war on your fans, stop the legal crap, and give your fans a reason to like you not hate you.
i think its real shame when people only buy one song that they’ve heard say on MTV or something, not sure what all this ‘artists getting a free ride’ crap is about, its not like they are forcing us to buy a whole album just to get 1 or 2 songs.
When i hear a really good song, i go and listen to a few at the record stores or online, then go buy the whole CD. The albums that i’ve really fallen in love with over the past few years especially are those that i’ve taken time with and really put the effort into listening to, its these that really reward. Thats what music is about, not this instant satisfaction crap. THAT is exactly whats wrong, the disposability and throw away culture is helping to kill the music industry.
People who only buy the single they like make my brain hurt, why don’t you try listening to the artist, put some time in and maybe you’ll grow to love that album. I’d hate to have a library full of ‘singles’ or similar, the less popular tracks off the albums tend to be better anyway.
I know i can’t speak for everyone, but i think iTunes, as great as it is, (For getting older/archive stuff esp.) has really eroded the music culture of today, its all about instant gratification, and means that albums don’t get listened to as much, but i guess it means something will have to change to get all the tracks on an album heard rather than relying on singles etc to get the album sold.
The Music / CD ecosystem will have to adapt, and change is ALWAYS good, and totally natural.
I think its an exciting time in many ways, but i just hope that the artists don’t suffer, i couldn’t give 2 shits about the record bosses.
I like the idea of new artiists uploading to an iTunes – type store and bypassing the record companies. Think it’d be hard to police and keep track of, and it’d be so HUGE so quickly it’s be hard to manage also.
sorry, ranting on.
MW: United. hmmm very fitting don’t you think?
@justified –
Yes, there’s always been free acquistion of music but it’s gone to a whole new level. Back in the day if i wanted a song I had to have a friend who had the album and was willing to lend it to me. Now, I can download a track by any band and it doesn’t matter if my friends have heard of it or not. Also, taping a record was more labor intensive and required a physical medium. Now a single mouse click and space on your HD is all that’s needed.
@ IT2 – I agree with everything you write except to note that caring how an artist looks has been part of the industry since the advent of TV. Way back in the 40s, Maria Lanza (the “voice of the century”) lost a movie because he gained weight. And on that 70s time capsule, The Brady Bunch, the kids were about to become a hit band largely because Greg fit into the lead singer’s jacket.
I’m not saying it isn’t true. I’m just saying it isn’t new.
“Also, taping a record was more labor intensive and required a physical medium. Now a single mouse click and space on your HD is all that’s needed.”
Uh, these are one in the same. Is that mouse not connected to a physical medium? Computer. HD. It’s the same thing. Labor intensive? Not really. I remember doing it. It surely was nothing like digging a ditch or roofing a house. THAT’S labor intensive.
” …caring how an artist looks has been part of the industry since the advent of TV.”
Though this is true, you have to admit that there are extremely few ugly people on the music landscape now. But ugly didn’t stop great music from happening in the 60s and 70s. You know why? Because there was no MTV back then. MTV turned music into fashion.