Digital music sales stall
The growth in legal online music has never kept up with the decline in CD sales, let alone replaced any meaningful portion of that lost revenue. Now, hope that it could is fading as once robust sales growth has shriveled to the point of near irrelevance.
With a fresh set of Nielsen Soundscan data in hand, Reuters reports that music download sales are up by about 5 percent this year or just 95-million tracks over 2009 when total track sales increased by 277-million units. Although digital album sales ticked up nicely by 12 percent, individual track sales managed only 0.1 percent growth.
Moreover, the music industry sold 47-million fewer CDs so far this year than in 2009. Thereupon, assuming 12 songs per disk, the decline in CD sales (564-million songs) outpaced the growth in digital by about 469 million tracks for a five fold overall loss.
Another sobering bit is the fact that individual digital track sales share of the music companies’ overall digital sales actually shrank from 56 percent in 2009 to 53 percent so far this year.
See also: A 2009 New York Times infographic detailing the demise of the music industry.
The one sliver of hope in Nielsen’s music industry data is that the value of single-track sales has increased slightly over 2009. However, though the final numbers aren’t in, it’s believed that total digital album revenue for 2010, despite 12 percent growth in unit volume, will be flat compared to 2009.
Further, though Pandora increased its listener base by about 50 percent, this hasn’t translated into higher digital track sales.
That said, one wonders where iTunes is in this miasma — a growing share of a shrinking pie or part and parcel of the impending decline?
Insert fork
Well, for those of us who’ve been wishing for the wholesale demise of the legacy 20th Century music industry, the collapse is gaining momentum…
Still happy with what you’re seeing?
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December 12th, 2010
It’s not a question of being happy or unhappy about the dying music industry, is a matter of fact. Piracy, starting in the late 90s with cheap MP3 “rips”, brought in a cheap (in quality) alternative that ironically became a “standard” even for legal music sales these days.
There’s a whole generation out there who think excellence in music reproduction is to own a 320 K MP3 shadow of what used to be incomparably superior sounding material.
All in all, everyone is getting what they deserve: the greedy industry getting old and obsolete, the clueless listener getting (often stealing) cheap, second hand, degraded versions of what used to be technically impeccable recordings.
December 13th, 2010
Interesting pic you chose there. That picture was chosen for the Defenders of the Underworld single two vinyl from Battle Axe Records. Unfortunately that record label is out of business…It was a good label back in the day (1999-2005).
Back to the topic, the best way to increase music sales is for labels to promote explicit AND edited versions of albums. It’s next to IMPOSSIBLE to find edited versions these days! It’s like they’re trying to FORCE you to listen to dirty versions all of the time.
On top of that artists are only making “manufactured” or popular music instead of making true music from the heart, which has resulted in mediocre and inspiring albums with 13 tracks or less. A good pledged album would have 18+ tracks or more…but I guess artists have nothing more to talk about.
Another thing that’s killing cd sales are torrent sites, youtube video downloaders, and all other kind of hackware. Yes it’s nice to be able to preview a song to see if it’s worth buying, but uploading new albums a week before they’re officially released is just wrong!
Which in the end results in artists half assing everything because of some societal reject illegally uploading their music online to torrent sites.
December 13th, 2010
Interesting pic you chose there. That picture was chosen for the Defenders of the Underworld single two vinyl from Battle Axe Records “http://www.recordinspector.com/Pics/A6206.jpg”. Unfortunately that record label is out of business…It was a good label back in the day (1999-2005).
Back to the topic, the best way to increase music sales is for labels to promote explicit AND edited versions of albums. It’s next to IMPOSSIBLE to find edited versions these days! It’s like they’re trying to FORCE you to listen to dirty versions all of the time.
On top of that artists are only making “manufactured” or popular music instead of making true music from the heart, which has resulted in mediocre and inspiring albums with 13 tracks or less. A good pledged album would have 18+ tracks or more…but I guess artists have nothing more to talk about.
Another thing that’s killing cd sales are torrent sites, youtube video downloaders, and all other kind of hackware. Yes it’s nice to be able to preview a song to see if it’s worth buying, but uploading new albums a week before they’re officially released is just wrong!
Which in the end results in artists half assing everything because of some societal reject illegally uploading their music online to torrent sites.
December 13th, 2010
Upcoming generations, I feel, are so turned off by greedy music labels. We, as the younger generation, want it all when it comes to music. We have an unlimited amount of music at our fingertips and we want to listen to it all. So if they want us, give us a subscription to listen to all music on itunes or the like and figure out the ways to share profit. We want to listen to music legally. They just make it impossible financially to do so. I would rather pay $25 a month (that I won’t even notice “floating” out of my account each month) to be able to listen to whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, and on what device I want than spend $25 dollars (always forcing you to think, “do I really want this?”) on a few albums I’ll get tired of listening to or 25 songs (some of which I’ll ask myself later why I actually bought). Then you can also offer a way to buy the music as well. Would you like to purchase a CD or maybe vinyl record of that album that also came with a digital copy? They can make more money from us, they just don’t choose to change their ways…right now, i feel, it’s us against them
December 13th, 2010
Well, the answer lies in the “sliver of hope” mentioned in the last paragraph of the article:
“…the value of single-track sales has increased slightly over 2009″ meaning that the music industry forced Apple and others to up the price for “new” tracks from 99 cent to 1.29 (US$ or Euro, take your pick). And – surprise – the customers responded to the 30% price increase with “flat individual track” purchase.
Greedy music “industry” – when will you ever learn?
December 13th, 2010
“That picture was chosen for the Defenders of the Underworld single two vinyl from Battle Axe Records “http://www.recordinspector.com/Pics/A6206.jpg”.”
And here I thought it was from the Self Titled album by Molly Hatchet.
http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/m/molly-hatchet/album-molly-hatchet.jpg
In truth, I don’t believe it was drawn for either of them but both decided to use the same artwork.
December 13th, 2010
The Future of Sega wrote:
Interesting pic you chose there. That picture was chosen for the Defenders of the Underworld single two vinyl from Battle Axe Records “http://www.recordinspector.com/Pics/A6206.jpg”. Unfortunately that record label is out of business…It was a good label back in the day (1999-2005).
No offense to the cat that posted this but that paragraph above is one of the biggest problems with today’s music industry.
The image used by the author of this blog is the album cover of Molly Hatchet’s debut album in 1978 painted by Frank Fazetta. The other image in your link is from Molly Hatchet’s second album called “Flirtin’ with Disaster” also painted by Fazetta.
Today’s “artists” are not musicians. They are more akin to computer programmers. I’d bet there is not a single live instrument on 95% of the top 40 records today. Everything is stolen from the real artists of the past.
Any jackwipe with a computer and a pretty face can become a star. The traditional record company has been dead for years now, we’re just now getting a whiff of the rotten corpse.
There’s still good music being made by real musicians today, you just have to look much harder to find it than you should have to.
BTW, 1999-2005 is “Back in the day”???!!! I guess I’m just an old and angry Punk. lol!
Big E
December 14th, 2010
Perhaps it has something to do with uninspired, manufactured music that is uninteresting to many? It seems every “new” song I hear today sounds like the one I heard yesterday. The whole of the pop music industry needs an overhaul.
December 15th, 2010
Does it mean that cds and vinyl records (album or single) which come with an mp3 voucher have a bigger chance to be sold? I’m asking this question, because i want to release my works on vinyl and cd.
December 15th, 2010
One more thing: I wouldn’t like to release my works independently, a record deal with a label is the best option on my opinion (especially in case of House Music production).