CD Sales dropped 12.8 percent last year after dropping 8.1 percent in 2005. Digital downloads didn’t pick up the slack, despite increasing 74.4%. All in all, the recording industry’s sales dropped 6.2 percent
PCWorld tossed out the “p” word: “Piracy,” but we’re going to throw out another one. A “c” word. C for crap. Crap music. Crap products. Crap policies. Crap content. Then again, maybe its just us, but when we look at what you get on a DVD or a game vs what you get on a CD, it does occur to us that this may have something to do with the slide in music sales. But then again what do we know. —MEGHANN MARCO
Digital Tunes Not Making Up for CD Slide [PC World]
(Photo: fluzo)
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@arelys521: Good call! Also WOXY.
http://WOXY.com
http://woxy.lala.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WOXY_(internet_radio)
Excerpt:
The internet-only incarnation of the station has won multiple times at the Plug Independent Music Awards.
* 2005 Internet radio station of the year
* 2007 Internet radio station of the year
* 2007 Podcast of the Year: WOXY.com Lounge Acts
The “freeware” model of indie labels is really neat in my opinion. Giving music away and saying “hey if you like this and want us to make more shoot us a few bucks.” Is a nice way to promote yourself.
Kinda gives you faith that we aren’t all bad after all. I mean where along the line did the cult of money come along and dictate that to be truly a successful artist you had to be rich. Who cares what your music is, he who has the most toys wins? Doesn’t make sense to me.
@tcabeen: I think you misunderstood me. I didn’t mean that the consumer should just do what commercials tell them to.
By, “It’s not up to the consumer to figure out how to give a company their money” I meant that consumers aren’t obligated to buy music: if the labels haven’t promoted anything they want to buy they aren’t going to go, “Gee, I still need to figure out a way to give Company X $20 of my money.”
That’s what I meant by “there’s nothing good out” is a legitimate compliant when it comes to sales. People don’t want to work hard to give someone their money. If they don’t hear music they like they won’t buy any at all.
i’d like to give a little shout out to lou brutus on fungus53…keeping me content with round-the-clock commercial-free punk bliss.
& to those two idiots on alternative press – if you don’t get off my punk station i’m coming to cleveland to give you a curby.
regarding the price of CD’s: How is it that local/unsigned/indie bands can sell their CD’s at shows for $10 and still make money? My friends’ band does this and their CD’s are just as good quality as any other band’s.
For those who feel there is no good new music: Get out of the house and go see a show. The last 10 or so CD’s I’ve gotten have been by bands I had never heard prior to seeing them play with another band I liked.
Maybe this is particularly true of hardcore and metal shows (which I go to at least two to three times a month) because they tend to feature multiple bands of similar genres and don’t cost a fortune, but I can’t see how it would hurt to try if you like other styles.
The research regarding CD sales does not provide the complete picture. Record companies over the past several years have been putting out fewer CD’s, opting instead to release fewer CD’s that were more likely to produce profits.
I remember reading last year (can’t remember where) that although sales dropped 8.1%, the number of releases dropped in the neighborhood of 12%, and sales dropped a mere 4%. Doesn’t that mean that for 12% fewer releases, the record companies actually increased revenue by about 4%?
Isn’t it almost ironic that the RIAA posts these miserable numbers just one day after the Sound Exchange crowed about strangling one of the emerging tools for making music listenable again. When they’ve finished killing off Pandora and LastFM where people actually discover new things and Sirius merges with XM to cut the number of satellite stations in half, the RIAA will appear again next quarter to report a further decline in sales.
@KatieKate93: Yeah I have found a lot of good music with the opening/non-headlining bands at the shows I go to. Most bands pull similar acts to go with them.
@vanilla-fro
A band can charge $10 for their CD at a show because the cost of production is low, even professional printing, cd-labelling etc. Even in low qty’s of 100-250 units, a professional CD-duplication place can do a CD that’ll look every bit as good your average major-label CD at approx a buck. So that’s a $9 profit for the band (which I don’t mind paying because it supports the artists directly). So if a band plays a show and they sell 50 CD’s, that’s an extra $450 they get on top of their performance fee (often nothing if they are just starting out).
Now compare that to the poor-widdle-itty-bitty major labels who churn out thousands to millions of CD’s (at a production cost of probably 10-25 cents) and have to charge a while 15 dollars for their CD’s.
It just isn’t fair, poor guys. I’d be emo too.
I think the drop in sales year after year just reflects the unlimited number of entertainment items people can spend their money on.
At one time, as a teenager/college student, you bought music. Now you can pick from music – cd’s and individual tracks, video games and dvds. In college I spent a lot of time (probably too much). Now I’m guessing the average male college student wastes time playing video games.
And as for Piracy, I taped a TON of albums when I was in college. That didn’t stop me from still buying a TON of albums during and after college.
Not to defend the music industry or the RIAA but before comparing CDs to DVDs and video games, you need to understand you are not comparing apples to apples.
The film industry makes money 5 different ways off a film. First is box office, typically most film companies make their money back or close to it off box office alone. In New York, if you go to a film you pay $11 for a ticket. There are many bands that you actually pay $11 for the CD. Then you move on to Pay Per View, another revenue stream, Cable rights: revenue stream 3, rentals: revenue stream 4, and then finally DVD sales. DVDs are NOT a valid comparison.
Same for video games, you are looking at $40 plus for a video game, no comparison to the $10 to $12 many CDs are selling for in todays market. When CDs sell for $40 then compare them to video games.
The model is indeed broken but comparisons to these other industries are not valid.
@eldergias:
It’s been tried. Look up HDCD, Super Audio CD, and DVD Audio. HDCD is backwards-compatible with CD, so that standard CD players can play it; Super Audio CD and DVD Audio are not (physically, they’re DVDs), although some SACDs contain a CD-compatible layer.
HDCD didn’t really go anywhere, in part because it sounds like snake oil; SACD and DVD Audio are in a format war, and probably impaired by the fact that both of them have DRM.
And, of course, there’s the fact that most people can’t hear the difference—people who are happy with MP3 aren’t going to pay for better-than-CD quality.
@KatieKate93: I’ve yet to see a local show that’s less than $30/ticket. Who spends $60 on a night out for two but can’t afford to risk that $15 on a CD they may or may not like?
Personally, I rely on Pandora and Amazon for exposure to music I may or may not like, and that works just fine. Anything requiring more effort, and I wouldn’t bother. I have plenty of things to waste my paltry income on, thanks.
most local shows here are $5-15 and I live in one of the most expensive cities in the country.
Other GREAT radio station – KCRW in LA – LOVE Becomes Eclectic.
also Michigan State Univesity student station – for alternative/college and Eastern Michigan University station – for jazz, blues, world. Both available online for free.
I go to shows to see bands I love and want to support all of the time. I also buy music put out by Indie Labels and most RIAA labels.
The fact is most of the music put out by the RIAA labels is complete crap. If anyone can show me a tune I’d like that the RIAA put out in the past year, I’d be all ears.
Besides all that…hasn’t anyone heard of a boycott? The RIAA collectively make up some of the crappiest companies in the world. If people aren’t buying their shit, maybe its because they suck ass.
…..Frankly, from listening to my kids’ Wii and XBox 360s that are on most hours of the day, the most talented musicians are making video game soundtracks. I figure that’s a sweet gig, recording during the day, getting a check, and sleeping at home at night.
…..A lot of the issue of “sound quality” isn’t the format, really. It has to do with poor production values in the studio. I think record execs demand the most bland, uninteresting mix possible. First, record it dry as hell. Put triggers on the drummer’s kit, and use house samples on the track. No individual player nuances allowed! Out of tune guitars aren’t fixed or re-recorded, no working on mike placement, no accounting for room acoustics, no fine tuning the eq for each singer, just compress the whole thing to hell and back, and run the BBE sonic maximizer over the top of it. Get in, get out, in as few hours as possible.
…..It’s nice to be able to hear stuff on XM, or the music blogs, and realize that the CD is probably a waste. Back when I was a kid, you bought it for one song on the radio, and were stuck with the rest. It’s a liberating era, to be sure!
@ NoxiousCleric: see also Baen Free Library with a variety of authors & books for free. Ties to their WebScription EBook site with good prices on good books.
Also has good articles on the Free library on copyright, technology, etc. under Prime Palaver.
My husband and I used to spend >$100/week on new music. We have walls of records and CDs. Over the past few years though, we’ve stopping buying music. And it’s only partly because our priorities changed (e.g. mortgage).
Most of the music stores around here have gone out of business. The only places to buy CDs are bigbox retailers like Target, Walmart, Best Buy — and they typically don’t stock the artists we enjoy.
I suppose I _could_ buy all my CDs online from Amazon and indie labels, but I like the tactile experience of music shopping. I like pulling an album out of the bin and looking it over.
Instead, every few months, we head across town to a little indie record store where the owner is a musichead and always has something new and interesting to share. Unfortunately, it’s a chore to get over there. So, we’re buying a lot less music than ever.
The first time I brought an America CDs was on Tuesday for $10 and that’s NIN. That’s quality music that I don’t mind paying for other than that, I’ll stick to my Kpop fix.
Good music or bad music (these days most of it is bad) I refuse to by any CD. I don’t pirate anything either.
I use XM and the radio… I have a large CD collection and it has not grown for some time now and I doubt it will grow anymore.
The RIAA can DIAF. I will *never* buy a CD as long as they are around with their current policies.
Are you reading this, RIAA? This is *WHY* your sales are are down. You suck. The current music talent sucks.
Keep holding your breath, you are slowly sinking for good!
Are telegraph sales down, too? CD’s are obsolete!
For some time there hasn’t been a lot of music I really want to spend my hard earned money on. If my personal purchase history were what the RIAA was keeping track of they would have been out of business a couple of years ago. The last music I purchased through traditional means was Sting – Brand New Day. I’m afraid that the music industry is choking on that bile that is the RIAA.
I’m spending some money at garage sales occasionally and I’m hanging out at Amie Street listening to a lot of Indie Rock.
http://web1.amiestreet.com/welcome
That’s the link for it. Enjoy.
The new Jason Falkner CD, currently only available in Japan and on Amazon.com, is absolutely stunning. So go out and buy that. If we all did, then, um, Jason would make some money and it probably wouldn’t make much of a difference. But we should, anyway.
And I’ll have to second the Amie Street recommendation. Because, you know, shamelessly, if you click on this link, you can buy my music. Which you should. Because it’s good — and totally DRM free!
@sleazell:
They lost me with the peer-to-peer lawsuits. Because that’s how I was finding new music.
I would say piracy might have something to do with the sales decline, but I doubt much. If album sales are in decline, how do the sales numbers rate from the numbers in the 50′s, 60′s, 70′s, 80′s, 90′s, today? Just a curiosity…because as I see it, the ‘mainstream’ music that is forced upon us is crap. I grew up in the 80′s — I can recall the ‘Top 40′ stations playing music from all genres. Today, ‘Top 40′ is about 95% hip-hop, cRap, and bubble gum pop geared to teens. Sure, teens will spend their money on cd’s, but why when you can buy a single or two instead? Most of the junk out there nowadays are going to only make the list of future 1-hit wonders!
Besides the record companies generally pushing the ‘bad’ stuff, we no longer can watch the videos on MTV and go buy the music we see (when is the last time MTV actually played a video?) We can find good music to our tastes, but it does take some effort, even if minimal.
And to the comments on Pandora — it is awesome! I’ve found a lot of ‘new’ music I didn’t know before!
@eldergias: “What is the recording company’s rational for not encoding their CDs with e higher bite rate so that the music quality is higher? I simply cannot understand it. Higher quality of music means more interest by customers.”
Because Americans don’t care about quality. The current crowd is satisfied with listening to 128Kbps MP3s with piss-poor encoding over a free set of earbud headphones which came with their iPod. One other issue is that the CD spec only allows 44.1KHz audio. The other higher-quality formats have their own glitches (DRM/format pissing war).
Popular music today definitely is not of the calibre we’ve seen in decades past. Today’s popular music is much like every other product we buy today — disposable. I can’t get into to many details, but having recently followed and investigated the business dealings of a very popular music producer who was responsible for many popular top-chart acts, it’s expensive to find and market good artists. Even with the popular crap, you’d be surprised how shitty the demo reels are. For every 1 star, there’s probably 20-100 failures for the producer & record company.
For what it’s worth, I normally buy 20-100 CDs/year. Guaranteed none of them will show up on any of the music charts. Most of them probably aren’t available in the big box stores, many of them won’t even be found at traditional music stores. How did I discover these artists? By downloading “illegal” MP3s! I’m NOT satisfied with 128kbps MP3s, so even if I get a whole album via BitTorrent/Limewire (rarely)/BitLord/eMule, if I find it interesting, I’ll go out and get the CD…which brings me to another point — Why do I have to import so many of these CDs?!? These CDs should be here already. It’d be a great savings to the music industry to promote artists which they already have in their collection.
Pandora/etc help, but even they don’t have many of the artists I listen to.
My taste in music is quite broad, with just about every genre represented except for (C)rap, twangy & modern country, and the “Beautiful Music” format, which is anything but beautiful or music.
My love is for classical, opera, and jazz. And I’ve found a great source for it — the local Uni. I offer to record the students’ recitals for a nominal fee and then I get to record it any way I please. 24 channels of uncompressed 96KHz 24-bit bliss, for me to master any way I please. It’s a beautiful thing. It’s also highly rewarding to be able to see the concert live, capture it, master it, and to have been part of the process. It also gives me the ability to make sure a recording is exactly the way I like it. Clean, crisp audio where the performance hall is part of the recording. Occasionally even the sounds outside the performance hall become part of the recording, which only adds to the “being there” feeling.
Last 3 CDs purchased:
Cowboy Junkies – Trinity Sessions. Awesome accoustic album. Recorded with a single 4-element Ambisonic mic… MUST be heard on a good stereo to truly appreciate it. Your home theater/stereo you bought from Circuit City/Best Buy need not apply here.
Solomon Burke – Nashville . Normally not my type of music, but the acoustics of the album (recorded in some guy’s living room) are excellent and the music itself is good.
Solomon Burke – Don’t Give Up On Me. Absolutely shitty acoustics and recording techniques on this album which is an absolute shame, if not crime. Track #10 (None of us are Free) has The Blind Boys of Alabama singing backup, but it sounds like they threw a couple of wet towels over the backup vocal mics on this and other tracks of the recording. Also a few times where they clipped out a track or two on the multitrack. Good music overall.
Next 3 CDs considering:
Amy Winehouse – Back to Black. Take a good jazz/blues club singer and add a Motown flair.
Richard Cheese – Aperitif for Destruction – Lounge versions of your favourite music.
Richard Cheese – The Sunny Side of the Moon . More Lounge versions of popular songs.
I said I had wide & varied taste of music.
For the people who haven’t tried Pandora: http://www.pandora.com
I listen to it when i get bored of the same stuff, the main problem i have is that i do bump into crap, and im a hard guy to convince of new music, but it helps, it really does. Just be pacient.
What the hell happened to REAL Country Music? The late 80′s and 90′s decade for Country Music was the best. Today’s Country Music all sounds like Pop and Rock. If Music Industry wants to produce Country Pop and Country Rock why can’t they have a separate Station Called Country Rock or Country Pop. I love Country Music Stop trying to focus on just bringing in new Country fans and Focus on trying to keep true Country fans to stay Country fans.
Also the 80′s was the best decade for Pop and Rock Music. Todays Music Sucks!! There is truly no talent on the radio nowadays.
I love all kinds of music but (C)Rap and heavy Metal.
My favorite Music is Country Music.
I also love Reggae, R&B, Polka Music, Irish Music, Pop and Rock and anything out of the ordinary.
The radio stations play the same garbage all day long.
Put some normal music on the radio Please.
Kalmakazee: Try taking a listen to the Solomon Burke Nashville album, it might be up your alley. It lacks twang, which is the only reason it made a home in my collection, but it’s definitely country.
If you really like polka & reggae (and soca), give WMNF-FM a listen (www.wmnf.org) on Sundays from 2pm-7pm. Polka from 2pm-4pm, complete with the listing of events happening at the German & Polish clubs of the Tampa Bay area and from 4pm-7pm it’s all reggae & soca. No commercials. For Irish, I’ve found myself gravitating towards liveireland.com’s first stream (traditional), ‘though they could use a larger playlist.
I do have a certain fondness for some polka music. Some of it’s purely bad, but other bits of it are fun. FWIW, I’ll be playing polka music with 20,000 watts of pure acoustic power this weekend, ‘though I don’t think the visiting team will be as enthusiastic about it as I am.
@Rectilinear Propagation: That totally makes sense. My mistake. I totally agree. If you don’t have a good product or can’t properly market it, few people will be throwing money your way.
@John Stracke: It’s silly. HDCDs and SACDs are the same “bitrate” as regular CDs. They just have a couple more channels for surround sound. I’m not going to get into the argument about the quality of audio to be found on CDs, because it’s been SO thoroughlly overdone already. There are some out there who think CDs are crap quality. Fine. But they’re inarguably in the minority, and that minority is so small that it can’t possibly be the REASON that sales are down. eldergias‘s comment is totally unrelated to the post.
He could point out that Vinyl album sales are up, though. That small minority who have trouble with CDs absolutely love their LPs, and they’re voting with their dollars.
In other news, I totally followed my own advice last night and spent the entire evening listening to WOXY. Man, it’s been TOO long. There’s some great stuff out there.
@kalmakazee: For Irish, I love The Thistle & Shamrock on NPR. If your local station doesn’t play it, you can find another station on Shoutcast or some other online radio stations.
In fact, check NPR programs for all that stuff. And then move on to the BBC. A LOT of stations broadcast online, with more and more joining all the time. You can find great things.
Myself, I love the drum & bass show on BBC’s radio one. Man, I would love to have something like that in the US. Or I’d at least love to have a way to record the stream so I can listen to it at work. mmmmm.
Hey – I did *MY* part. I bought a box set of three Donna Summer CDs and a Best Of Lipps Inc. Of course these are 30 year old disco artists and not The Hip New Thing, so the RIAA probably doesn’t care about them. But hey, if new music didnt completly suck, I might consider getting some!
I couldn’t tell from either the WaPo article or this one – is this that RIAA-member music sales are down, or are *all* music sales down? How do they measure this?
I can’t even think of the last time I bought something from one of the big 4, but I buy a couple of CDs a month. (I kind of wanted that new Modest Mouse CD, but not badly enough to trust Sony with my computer.)
These days, I find new music through Myspace or labels of bands I already like. And my music purchases are only limited by my budget, not by inability to find things I like. (And I’m pretty picky.)
I haven’t bought a new CD in years and have no intention of doing so anytime in the near future. When I find a CD I’d like to own, I go to Amazon and put it on my wish list. Fortunately, I’m a patient person and can wait until there are enough used copies of the CD to bring the price down. That’s when I buy it. I like to think I’m saving money and sticking it to the RIAA all at the same time.
I would never buy music as its just not worth the money. I used to when I was a teenager but now I just buy games as you get your moneys worth. The music just doesn’t interest me anymore. I live in UK and we are subjected to the tripe of Lilly Allen and Sandi Thom -Fake trash aimed at people who buy music in supermarkets. And yet they blame piracy? Who in their right minds would even steal this garbage! It is my view that these cocaine addled fat cats have milked this industry to death and have been lucky to get away with it for this long- I’m not paying for the cocaine habits of record industry types.
Music should be made for the love of music and released digitally for free it should not be a business market anyway.Its just sounds! In UK they have always overcharged until people have been milked dry- It wasn’t long ago that a typical album cost between £12 and £15. Now that’s what I call piracy!
@dbeahn: Then that means that prices have come down because of inflation. 20 dollars 20 years ago was worth a lot more than 20 dollars today. If you keep the price the same over the years then essentially the price has dropped.
The increasing diversity of music purchasing methods, places, and formats makes any data about the market less accurate every year.
I know a lot of good musicians who are selling records independently to friends and at shows, and nearly making a living off of it.
There will always be a big market for good music, this is just an indication that the RIAA is no longer producing a product that anyone wants- they should start thinking about making CDs that have more extra physical content- stickers, coupons, good booklets, DVDs, that sort of thing.
Actually they should just jump off a cliff.