Download Buyers Less Hit Driven Than Record Store Sales
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Download music buyers are less hit driven than their brick and mortar counterparts according to a study by Wired editor-in-chief Chris Andersen for his upcoming book The Long Tail. This chart compares Nielsen’s Soundscan (CD retail) data with Rhapsody downloads. To avoid over-compressing the vertical scale, he started at rank 100 and only shows the top 5,000 albums and compared he top 5 tracks from a CD as the total download vs. the full CD purchase.
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yeah well,
They only sell hit album in stores. These days, if I go to Best Buy I will be lucky if I can find 1 out of 15 CD on my ‘buy’ list.
Tower is better, simply because they carry all the popular classical. But they are going down fast.
At this point in time, what kill CD is not download, but lack of availability. As people become aware of indie/smaller acts that fit that satisfy their musical preference better, nobody will feel compelled to buy something because it’s on MTV or radio.
The new generation of music buyers has moved on.