According to holiday numbers released by Neilsen Soundscan, physical album sales were down 21.4 percent from last year. The drop is the latest indication of the spectacular decline of the music industry’s ability to move albums.
Many in the industry will shake angry fists of blame at Online piracy, but, as Ars points out, the fact that Josh Groban’s “Noel” was the highest selling album of the year speaks volumes. In summary: the music industry needs to focus more on making better music and work on becoming more progressive so that it can better fulfill consumers’ tastes.
‘Noel’ is music’s saving grace [Variety]
It feels like I bought 20 albums in the past few weeks, there is a lot of good music, it just seems like the record industry only wants to market crap, any one who listens to crap will inevitably hate music
The bitching and whining about decreased physical album sales is pointless unless the huge RISE in digital sales is included.
The margins for digital sales are negligible. The ringtone market is multi-billion, of which artists see none, and companies see all.
The music industry can’t sell cd’s. True. But they’re also not selling cassettes, vinyl or 8 tracks like they used to.
They’re doing just fine, thank you very much, just look at the annual download totals from iTunes alone.
Wow… I had no clue that me not shopping AT ALL over the holidays would have such a detrimental impact on overall sales.
Jon
I’m always puzzled as to why “bad sales” is news to begin with. What we’re talking about is decreased profits, after all. But fine, so be it. But I think it is especially nonsensical to continue writing these stories without including in the such articles data on the increased online sales. Are online sales increasing in such a way to offset “losses” in bricks and mortar sales? What about the absolute profits generated by online sales for back catalog items? Are the hundreds of millions of dollars in ringtones included?
CD sales will continue to decrease. Why buy a CD when you can get just the best songs from iTunes?
Yeah, I think the best way to solve this problem is that we need to make good music and fight against piracy. Just take Josh Groban’s “Noel” for example, Wonderful CD and bound to be a classic, I think! And now you can get it only for $12 : dealstudio.com/searchdeals.php?deal_id=75418 , So good music with good price, why people do not buy it? Absolutely impossibel!