"Music album sales hit eight-year low in 2005"

[beatlies]

Music album sales hit eight-year low in 2005

Wed Jan 4, 9:03 PM ET



LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - U.S. music album sales last year slid to their lowest level since 1996, squelching any hopes that the recording industry's long downward spiral may have bottomed out, according to sales data issued on Wednesday.

Tracking firm Nielsen SoundScan, which measures point-of-sale purchases across the United States, said total album sales -- including current and catalog titles -- fell 7.2 percent from 2004 to 618.9 million units, the lowest since 1996, when they were 616.6 million.

After enjoying a rare "up" year in 2004, prompting predictions the worst was over, sales flagged during 2005, hurt by competition from illegal downloads, rival forms of entertainment such as video games, and a lack of breakout musical acts.

Indeed the top album was from veteran pop singer Mariah Carey, who sold almost five million units of her comeback release "The Emancipation of Mimi." By contrast, the top album of 2004, R&B singer Usher's "Confessions," sold almost eight million copies that year.

The industry counts CDs, cassettes, vinyl records and digital releases as "albums."

Nielsen SoundScan said overall music sales, which includes albums, singles, music videos and digital tracks, jumped 22.7 percent to just over a billion units in 2005. The rise was fueled by a 194 percent increase in digital downloads.

Industry leader Universal Music Group was the top distributor with 31.7 percent of album sales, up from 29.6 percent in 2004. The unit of France's Vivendi Universal SA released both Carey's album and the year's second-ranked album, rapper 50 Cent's "The Massacre," which sold 4.9 million units.

[Japanese] Sony BMG Music Entertainment, a nascent joint venture between Sony Corp (NYSE:SNE - news). and [German] Bertelsmann AG, was second with 25.61 percent, down from 28.4 percent in 2004. Its top album was inaugural "American Idol" winner Kelly Clarkson's "Breakaway," which ranked No. 3 for the year with sales of 3.5 million copies.

Third was Warner Music Group Corp., with 15 percent of the market, up slightly from 2004 when it had about a 14.7 percent share. Album sales were led by punk [sic] trio Green Day, which sold 3.4 million copies of "American Idiot," the year's No. 4 release.

EMI Group Plc. was last among the "big four" major labels with 9.5 percent, down from 9.9 percent in 2004. Its top act was British band Coldplay, which ranked No. 6 on the albums list with sales of 2.6 million copies for "X&Y."

[Shadow]

I can't help it...

I have to play the role of heckler here.

Gee, Do you think outrageous prices and poor quality
music could be the reason for the sharp decline in
album sales?!?

[Doc]

Yes.


And two other things--massive presence of "derivative copy-cats"
and rampant "sub-splintering" of acts. I mean, Eminem or the like will come out with a real nice record, and 100 guys imitate it.

Or, with the splintering, inside the rock category there will be heavy metal, inside that, thrash metal, beside that will be something like doom metal, well, see for yourselves (though most of you know 9,000% more about rock and roll than I ever will):

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_heavy_metal_genres

That just leaves me without oxygen! And that's JUST heavy metal subdivisions!

With my ADHD/OCD complexes now fully stimulated, I feel I must get somewhat familiar with all of them to some degree. This isn't going to be easy. Captain, inititiate the iTunes downloader! They'll be fees to pay, but someone's gotta listen to all this s**t.......

This may take my focus off the BeAtLeS temporarily......

Are there that many forms of country-western? Rap? Hip-hop?
R&B? Other parts of rock and roll? Indy? Alternative? Ska?

My point------the plate, you know, the aggregate "musical plate" from which
music is served to the public, is now very large, diverse, and overwhelming.
Which is why perhaps a lot of folks might nestle comfortably into a small spectrum of categories.......which divides and defines the demographic breakdowns into many little wedges of musical pie sales....many individuals inside said "wedges" may find purchasing a lot of their favorites too expensive......but the advantage of having friends with taste like yourself is they will duplicate whatever you want for you for nothing......and people who like "funeral glam death metal" will have friends who also like "funeral glam death metal".......it's all the type person you are that the music will appeal to, I guess....and, out in the real world, a copy "purchased" at Tower becomes 5 copies for all the doom/gloom friends......

Gosh, I guess I'd like semi-classical, bluebirds and buttercups, non-industrial, back to nature, sweetened, lushly produced musical comedy medium metal.

Hold the pickles. Where is my black eye-shadow?

[beatlies]

There's a war against music going on, part of the larger war against culture: literature, visual arts, movies, morality. It's too anti-war, anti-capitalist and subversive to have anything filling the public sphere that is truly humanistic, warm, gentle or uplifting to the human spirit.

If the Beatles were starting out as a new group this year and released the white album it would get shunted to the margins as indy-folk-retro-broadway-country-neo-avant-garde-blues-non-commercial and receive some play on small college radio stations, maybe getting a tiny intellectual following, and not get the CDs distributed or promoted properly. John Lennon would be waiting tables and Faul would have to go back to walking the beat with the Ontario police (he might enjoy that more anyway.)

[JoJo]

One of the younger members of this board has turned me onto some of the newer music he listens to, and something like say The Flaming Lips is gentle and uplifting to the spirit IMO. Do they get a lot (or any) airplay? No but..they have a big following, the numbers are there at the concerts. This does remind me of the music I listened to when I was a teen, none of the albums I and my friends bought in huge numbers ever saw airplay on the radio, even back then when FM was still about playing cuts from albums, rather than churning out the top hits as it does now. (it was still the job of AM radio)

A group like Rush for example was popular entirely from one being turned on by friends back then, you would have no idea they even existed otherwise. And yet, when you went to a concert, the place was sold out, even at a big venue like Boston Garden.

I'll agree with what you are saying that radio is about selling the groups with the big promotional budget, but there are groups today, as there were then, that "win" due to "popular vote".

I'll tell you one thing, if satellite radio catches on..whoah! Something close to 100 music channels, and you might think that all someone would do is listen to the genre he feels most comfortable with.. However, there is the "artist alert" feature which beeps when an artist you like appears on any channel. U2 for example might appear on a channel that plays some weird alternative music, and then you leave that channel on, and will hear some new music you would have otherwise missed, becoming educated perhaps. I've only had a sat. radio for a couple of weeks, but that is exactly what's happening. Satellite radio is a little bit subversive, heh!

They have an Elvis and Stones channel, they gotta get a Beatles channel..

[eyesbleed]

jojo said:

I'll agree with what you are saying that radio is about selling the groups with the big promotional budget, but there are groups today, as there were then, that "win" due to "popular vote".

.

Ya, my top 5 fave artists don't get any airplay at all.
Neither on so-called alt-rock radio or TV... almost never.
But these artists have been my favorites for over 30yrs now.
I was in Best Buy for the first time in years the other day & there wasn't one cd by any of my favorite artists!
(to be fair.. this is a Best Buy in W.TX)
Yet all these artists seem to have plenty of fans who are more than eager to support them & are now stronger than ever.
Radio played no role what-so-ever in these bands success.
But most of the far inferior artists on the radio need the radio to sell cd's.... for the most part.
They aren't original enough to spread on their own merits.