What percentage of music is bought by people who aren't "into" music?

12%

To correspond with their 12 CDs. Duh.

the vast, vast majority of music is bought by non-geeks.

Funny you should bring this up, I was just wondering the same thing. I was having an argument with a friend and one of the relevant ideas was who are the primary drivers of the music market. For example, I own probably a thousand CDs or so and buy new music fairly often, but I'm unlikely to buy the releases that major labels are making most of their money on. Meanwhile, there are probably dozens of people who own only 20 CDs for every one of me. But when someone only owns 20 CDs, I'd bet money that at least 19 of them are big-sellers. But then there are a lot of self-avowed "music fans" who probably aren't like ILM-ers, in that they're not checking out everything, digging for obscurities, etc. But they do own lots of DMB, Amos Lee, Ben Harper, Jack Johnson, whatever else, and their taste probably ranges from stuff that sells millions to stuff that sells in the high tens or low hundreds of thousands.

58%

I am curious (orange) as to what the percentage of 'people who bought Crazy Frog and are 'into' music' is.

My initial thought was that most albums are bought by people who aren't into music, but that may not be the case...

2004 US album sales

665 million albums
2.25 albums/person
top 10 selling albums account for 34.6 million copies, or only 5.2% of total album sales

I thought the top 10 aggregate would make up a much larger percentage of albums sold

Going through the RIAA's sales awards for 2004, 55 albums released within the preceding year were certified platinum (1 million sold). But with 665 million albums sold over the course of the year, that's still not such a substantial percentage. Factor in sales from independent music retailers that aren't part of SoundScan and you're adding even more to the non-platinum end of the spectrum.

This could all mean that people that aren't "into" music are simply buying an album or two a year that's not a megaseller, but I suspect the buying habits of obsessive music consumers make up a pretty large slice of the pie.

I'd love to see mean/median/mode album sales numbers and sales within years broken down by the year albums were released (how many albums released before 1990 were sold last year? How many 2002 vs. 2003 vs. 2004 albums?) I'm sure all this data is available, but it probably takes a substantial amount of money to obtain. SoundScan's not doing it for free.

How expensive is getting info from SoundScan anyway?

Wait a minute.....665 million albums sold last year in the US???? or the world???

Because the 55 platinum albums are just for the US, right?

665 million albums sold in the US / 55 platinum albums certified for US sales

any idea how many total albums sold by all of the platimun and gold (do they give out gold albums anymore?) last year in the US?

I couldn't find that information, unfortunately. I was surprised by the number of older albums finally getting gold/platinum certified, though.Maybe buying habits lean toward popular artists but across a much broader time range than I'd figured.

They still give gold albums - it's 500,000 copies in the US. These numbers are different for most countries depending on their populations.

I made a few songs, and I have a cute, fun attitude about things, so probably a label will want to sign me. No, not a BIG label, just a little indie that will get me played on college radio stations and gain me cult status.

< head swims >

Most. Just look at the hitlists and you will see that.