Music Sales
nytimes.com
Music Sales
1–10 of 43 posts
Re: Music Sales
#2What are the sources of this numbers? What digital distributers are counted? Are they all? Are these the numbers from only sources directly represented by the RIAA? Does this count non-label record sales? Does this count revenue from sales of records like Radiohead's "In Rainbows" release? There is more that can be asked.
I am not sure what I can conclude or deduce from this graph; when there is a small nagging glare of "Source: Recording Industry Association of America" down at the bottom, tracking my gaze.
Re: Music Sales
#3I always really like the NYTimes graphics. They do a good job displaying info, and (not applicable to this one) their flash graphs are always more helpful than annoying.
Re: Music Sales
#4So, CDs are still outselling downloadable content by as much as 3-5x?
Re: Music Sales
#5I never knew that singles sold so tiny.
I don't understand why did anyone bother with them at all.
Re: Music Sales
#6Looks to me like CD sales were a bubble, and there's no reason to expect the music industry's success to continue as it has for the prior decade.
Re: Music Sales
#7Looks to me like CD sales were a bubble, and there's no reason to expect the music industry's success to continue as it has for the prior decade.
The question they must be asking themselves is how to repeat the bubble. The last one came from instituting a new technology which (in the popular imagination) rendered the old technology obsolete, and triggered a lot of repurchases. What kind of disruptive force, if any, could trigger this again?
Re: Music Sales
#8I never knew that singles sold so tiny. I don't understand why did anyone bother with them at all.
Singles were pressed for radio stations, back in the day. May as well sell 'em if you're already pressing them.
Sidenote: this is where the term 'B-side' came from. The A-side of the single had the song the music label wanted to promote, the B-side had some other song that most stations didn't play.
Re: Music Sales
#9Looks to me like CD sales were a bubble, and there's no reason to expect the music industry's success to continue as it has for the prior decade.
The question they must be asking themselves is how to repeat the bubble. The last one came from instituting a new technology which (in the popular imagination) rendered the old technology obsolete, and triggered a lot of repurchases. What kind of disruptive force, if any, could trigger this again?
I know! I know! Passing a bill to force the entire population of the U.S. to join BMG.
Obviously the answer was MP3s, but I think they might have missed the boat there...
Re: Music Sales
#10So, CDs are still outselling downloadable content by as much as 3-5x?
CD sales accounted for 80% of the 428 million units sold in 2008 (from all media).
In comparison there were just under a billion units sold in 1999 and the backstreet boys had the biggest album with over 16 million copies. Last year the top seller, Lil Wayne only sold 2.8 million. It took the b-boys just over a week for comparable sales at the peak of the market.
If I'm not mistaken, Norah Jones first album was the last to break the 10 million barrier.
Total units sold started dropping at an annual compounded rate of 6%/year in 1999 through 2004. With the introduction of iTunes in 2003, "album substitution" started to take hold and the decline accelerated. Albums were being replaced by single track downloads on iTunes at a rate of roughly 1.4 downloaded tracks per CD album. With an average of 12 tracks per cd.. that's an 88% drop in per unit sales (1.4 tracks are around $1 on iTunes vs. $16-$20 for the CD album).
The music industry is alive and well but the record industry has basically been obliterated.