CD sales are back on the rise with the overall music sales mid 2004 up 4% over the same period last year with the record industry delivering 10% more CDs to retail outlets respectively. However, despite the sales rise the RIAA claims that they have a long way to go yet.
Over the past few years, music sales has been declining each year and as expected the music industry put the blame on file sharing networks claiming that consumers have went online to download music to avoid paying for it, costing the jobs of thousands in the music industry. It is not clear if P2P piracy is the main reason due to economic decline and consumers choosing other forms of entertainment.
Some analysts predict the mid 2004 sale boost actually came from consumers sampling music from file sharing networks to decide whether to purchase it, boosting the sales of less known artists. On the other hand, top album sales are on the decline with the overall top 50 album sales dropping 16% since 2001 and the top 100 album sales dropping a whopping 19.7% over last year. According the RIAA, sales of digital music downloads have reached 59 million songs in the first half of 2004.
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The record industry's trade group said the value of shipments of all music at the midpoint of 2004 had climbed nearly 4 percent compared to the previous year. The industry has shipped 10 percent more CDs to retail outlets than last year, showing a strong increase in demand. But that growth does not mean that the industry can let up in its years-long legal attacks on file swapping and other digital copying, executives said. "We are rising out of a deep hole and still have a long way to go," RIAA Chief Executive Mitch Bainwol said. "Piracy, both online and on the street, continues to hit the music community hard, and thousands have lost their jobs because of it." The statistics are likely fuel new rounds of speculation about the effect of Internet swapping--and new digital download sales--on the music business. The music industry's balance sheets have been hard hit over the past four years, with steep, consecutive year-over-year declines in sales. The trends have led to widespread layoffs, consolidation and shrinking budgets for development of new acts. Read the full article here. |
In my opinion, I think the reason why the chart album sales are dropping could be that consumers are losing interesting in some of the modern music rather than resorting to file sharing networks to get the albums. While most consumers enjoy playing classic albums from the 80's over and over again, the same is likely not true regarding the top chart albums over the past few years. For example, a few studies have shown that many modern CDs have the music volume maximised such that the music 'stands out' by sounding louder than competitors. However, with the rhythm no longer standing out or the lyrics being drowned out, it starts to sound rather noisy. With DVD sales and Music videos on the rise, chances are that former CD lovers have found something else more entertaining.
Source: CNET News - Music
[edited by FreqNasty on 21.10.2004 07:35]
Music must be getting much better then...NOT! Not one of todays artists inspires me in anyway...quite sad really. I can't even remember when I last bought a CD, old or new.
Happy Birthday to you 
