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CD Music Sales Down 20% In Q1 2007
prostoalex writes "Music sales are not just falling, they're plummeting — by as much as 20% when you compare January-March 2007 with the 2006 numbers. The revenue numbers are actually worse, since CD prices are under pressure. The Wall Street Journal lists many factors contributing to the rapid decline: 800 fewer retail outlets (Tower Records' demise alone closed 89); increasingly negative attitude towards CD sales from big-box retailers (Best Buy now dedicates less floor space to CDs in favor of better-selling items); and file sharing, among others. Songs are being traded at a rate about 17 times the iTunes Store's recent rate of sales. Diminishing CD sales means that you don't have to sell as many to get on the charts. The 'Dreamgirls' movie soundtrack recently hit #1 by selling 60,000 CDs in a week, a number that wouldn't have made the top 30 in 2005."
"You're not entitled to my money" is that lesson.
I have nothing to say.
I wonder a bit about iTunes vs. peer-to-peer metrics. On iTunes one is liable to buy a single track or two whereas on file sharing services downloading the album is usually the only choice (even if you only want one track). This alone would account for some of why file sharing is so much more voluminous.
CommentBot 0.7a running with args "-module irritate,disagree -target random"
The other day, I was in a trendy clothing store. Embarrassment aside, I could not believe all of the innovative music that they were playing. There was one particular track that I wanted to buy so I queried the sales folk as to the artist name and title. They had no idea and were not provided with any resource to fine out.
But that got me thinking: The ClearChannel monopoly on our radio stations is the source of this problem. They "pay to play" the same 40 songs all day.
I remember back in the early 90s when the FCC allowed this sort of thing (it was previously not legal for a single company to own more than a certain amount of radio stations in a given market... I don't know the exact detail but I remember the discussion). I look back on the variety of music from pre-monopolization and it really illustrates the difference.
But they can always blame the pirates.
More
And the fact that Q1 of 2007 has had virtually no decent new music released couldn't have anything to do with it?
This is a time when the R&B era is over and Hip-hop is on the decline. Traditional Pop music seems to have all but vanished, rock music has never recovered since the 90's and Punk for several years has been hit & miss.
Is anyone surprised people are buying less music?
For the most part, I agree, the stuff that most of the music industry churns out is just that - stuff the music industry CHURNS out. It's default, boring, rehashed stuff. Why even listen to it, let alone buy it.
Places like iTunes, better yet, offer ways to buy just one track (how many times do people buy an entire CD simply because they like one, maybe two tracks?). Much cheaper.
Maybe it'll force "artists" to produce somewhat decent quality music.
init 11 - for when you need that edge.
Music is one of those things that you just don't need a brick-and-mortar shop to sell, or even a physical item. I'm sure the established industry will do everything it can to blame illegal file sharing for this trend, but that is only a vain attempt to prop up a dead business and keep a whole lot of useless people employed collecting big paychecks.
The simple fact: Their business model is obsolete. I would even go so far to say that the recording industry as a whole is obsolete now that the people who actually make the music have to power to self-publish and self-promote to the entire world.
=Smidge=
...when the compact disc (CD) arrived.
This is no different than the other evolutions of music distribution.
GET WITH THE PROGRAM, RIAA, or die a shameful, greedy death.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
None taken.
I think what we're hoping for though is to be able to gloat over the demise of the current recording industry, which many people feel is corrupt and not conducive to creativity.
An industry that does well should be one that creates or adds value without the need for artificial controls over supply. The bottled water industry does very well indeed without needing legislation restricting the supply of drinking water from other sources. It adds value by providing a quality controlled, conveniently packaged product. If the water in the bottle was poor quality, or you needed special controls to get the bottle open, people would probably prefer the tap in the public conveniences, after all, that water is free...
How about
1. Everybody over 20 has now finished replacing their vinyl and cassettes with CDs
2. The only records you get to hear about are the handful of rubbish on the radio playlists that you're already sick of.
3. Under 20s are now pissing their money away:
PS: Kids! Get off my lawn!!!
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
The reason why only certain people manage to establish themselves as money makers through live performance is because RIAA members and ClearChannel are the gatekeepers to that prosperity. The Internet can permit people to market their own music and establish their own popularity without the control and oversight of the RIAA. Once the RIAA hegemony is broken down such that free Internet distribution, not radio or MTV, is the dominant form of bringing one's music to the people, then good performers will be able to make a living from their live performances.
They'll probably have to cancel MTV's Cribs due to lack of subject material, but at least talented performers will be able to make an honest living without first being "discovered" by some overpaid record exec.
Many of the bands we still listen to (such as the Beatles) weren't label stooges, but I'm sure they were the exception. Labels have always tried to sell bubble-gum tripe and take as few risks as possible.
Until we have another way to get music in a lossless format...I really don't want them to stop pressing CD's.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I know I'm sounding harsh, but there are good reasons for things being this way. I've discussed this matter extensively on another
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
While your suggestions were helpful, you should omitted the most basic one, that should have been #1.
- Actively look and cultivate talented groups that MAKE good music to publish on a CD...and make it a full disk worth of good music.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
You know, this is true. While overall I've never been a fan of Top 40 music, it's only in the last 7 or 8 years that I have not been interested in *anything at all* on the charts. Admittedly, I'm getting older (in my 30s now), but my disdain for what's out there now is not that I find the music necessarily "too loud and offensive for my early middle age years" or that I "don't get it" but that it is all...like product, barcoded, generic...I can't tell one band apart from the other. I can't remember the damn melodies from half the songs I hear. A minute after a song ends, if you asked me to hum it, I couldn't (there are some isolated exceptions).
I mean, it's like so many mediocre, flattened McDonalds hamburgers which have been left under heat lamps for an hour. I doubt this is the *full* reason why the industry suffers - I am pretty sure it's mainly piracy - but really, and I do think I'm being far, the stuff in top 40 now is the most generic, forgettable, all-sounds-the-same stuff I can recall in my lifetime.
I grew up in the 80s and I *hated* that. I hated most of the music but looking back, there was way more diversity even in synth-pop and crap like that, than there is in what people call emo today (I mention emo just because being white and middle class, this is supposed to appeal to me...or a younger version of me).
And let's not forget the aesthetic sewer hip hop and R&B is in. R&B was already dying in the early 80s, but rap had its golden age at the end of that decade, and has steadily declined since around 1993 or so, leaving what we have today - music so awful I am afraid to be in an elevator with a fan of it (not because I think they're bad-ass thugs, but because I think they must be barely sentient and might try to like, eat me or something, and not in the good way). And I'm not talking about underground/alternative rap - I'm talking about the top 40, "Hi I'm a big dumb idiot, I'm throwing money at the camera while a bunch of sluts dance behind me, all of which I'm going to have to pay the record company for, which will bankrupt me and launch me into obscurity back in the ghetto I came from."
There's obviously an audience for these albums and singles - really, really, really stupid teenagers. (Music execs like to say "teenagers" but what they mean are the dumbest of teenagers. Any of you reading this who are a teenager now and have to go through your teens in this culture have my utmost sympathy. And yes, it's as bad as you think it is.)
You know, what I really want is art and poetry; I want to be moved, like what I'm listening to *means something*. I want an emotional response, and if not that, then at bare minimum I want clever and quirky or even funny, but what's out there now doesn't even deliver *that*. I still pay attention to pop music because I am trying to understand why people listen to it. I understand why a bunch of posers out with their friends listen to it as a shared ritual of simian idiocy, but I don't get why I see these white boys driving around in pimped out hatchbacks listening to this shit when they don't *have* to? Do they not have a stash of like, real music to listen to when they don't have to pretend to like what everyone else likes? Are there really that many stupid, empty-eyed kids?
You know, I could chalk this up to a difference in aesthetics because clearly I probably listen to a lot of stuff other people really dislike, but in most cases I can *understand* why people would like something I'm not into (For example, I despise Nine Inch Nails, but I understand why someone would like its visceral energy). But I really don't understand why today's top 40 appeals to anyone at all. I can't abstractly understand why someone would like dickless tripe like AFI which the local Clear Channel stations just won't stop playing. This is an actual experience:
Me: "This is complete, crap, what is this, who would possibly like this, there's nothing here?"
Wife: "It's AFI. You asked me the same question about this same s