Album Sales Drop – Anyone Feel Like Paying Up?
In 2008, album sales went down in contrast to the digital business, which showed growth but also slowed in comparison to last year.
Reuters reports that total album sales fell 14 percent to 428.4 million units during the 52-week period ended December 28. This follows the downward trend for the industry in the since 2000. This year, the industry as a whole faced an economic recession. Although digital downloads have gained ground over the years, digital track sales rose 27 percent to a record 1.07 billion units, but the growth was slower than the 45 percent jump in 2007.
But what do they expect people to do when times are tough?
While the data reflects the worldwide economic crisis, it also can be attributed to Internet piracy and might indicate a trend towards online listening. The majority of music can be streamed from numerous online sources for free. When times are tough people will turn to free music instead of paying for it.
What remains to be seen is how the big labels will react to continued revenue loss, and how independent artists are faring in the industry. Will our favorite artists be able to survive? Does anyone care?
What do you think? Would you rather download for free or keep the labels alive?
Source: Reuters
Monday, January 5, 2009 12:43PM
Call me old fashioned or call me honest but I don't mind paying for my music. I do think labels need to think of interesting ways of packaging albums if they want people to actually pay for music – think more 2 disc sets featuring dvd's with special features or really cool art work/liner notes (think Stars "In Our Bedroom After the War")
Wednesday, February 11, 2009 11:43AM
[...] is a fact that the music industry is in recession. In the aftermath of 2008, when miserable record sales and widespread file-sharing destroyed profits for major labels, the music industry is now [...]