New Album Releases Hit Hard By Sales Downturn
A Nielsen study presented last week at NARM (link to full presentation after the jump) contained some particularly bad news for artists and labels releasing new albums. As steep as the overall sales decline has been, the drop for new releases has been been sharper and the chance of breaking through even more difficult.
- 105,575 albums released in '08
- Less than 1% of all releases or just 950 albums sold more than 25,000 copies
- Those 950 accounted for 82% of all new releases sold
- New release album sales fell 18% to 149 million
- That's half the new release sales generated in '01
- 50,000 digital only albums accounted for 1.8% of all new release album sales
Some question the accuracy of Nielsen's Soundscan data collection knowing that many direct and non-traditional sales go under recorded. Albums were the focus here and single track and ringtone sales add significantly to the overall picture.
But even if these numbers are off by 20 or even 50%, it is clear that album sales, which was once the foundation of artist and label income can no longer be counted on. Touring, merchandise, vinyl, single track, ringtone, ring back and mobile sales along with income from synch, licensing and streaming are all pieces of the puzzle that any indie music artist or entrepreneur must fit together to find profitability the new music industry.
READ IT AND WEEP: Download a pdf of the full Nielsen study presentation at NARM here.
I’ve always wondered how soundscan accounts for the fact that iTunes (arguably the largest digital retailer) reports album downloads as individual track downloads when the track count is ten tracks or fewer.
The major labels and large indie labels are the only companies that report to Soundscan. Independently owned artist labels make up a much larger portion of all music distributed today. So the numbers are very skewed. Why this persistent perception that music isn’t selling is a curious one.
Live music drives music sales in larger proportion than any other method. More CDs are sold from the stage than most people realize, because live music creates an emotional experience for the audience who then wants to purchase the music and take it home to hear again.
Honestly there is nothing emotional about standing in Wal-Mart, Target or Best Buy to purchase a CD. Therefore, yes, the numbers of retail outlet sales have fallen, because the retail outlets themselves have gone out of business. When record stores existed, and that was the only way to purchase a recording, it was a luxury experience. Could have spent all day in Borders or Barnes & Noble. But those days are over.
Soundscan is not the do all and end all in the perception of music sales. Let’s see what happens next.
Janet Hansen
Scout66.com
so, about half of all albums released were digital-only (50,000 of 105,575) yet they sold only 1.8% of all new release album sales – this completely contradicts the extremely biased source hypebot quotes that predicts 83% of all music sold in 2013 will be digital…..