In 2008, the music industry is doomed...or is it?

Is it possible that steadily more stuff is being included in Nielsen SoundScan?

Probably not enough to make that big a difference (though the dollar figure difference is not nearly +14%, obviously.) But there have certainly been some changes; for instance, I'm pretty sure the Eagles' Wal-Mart exclusive last year was SoundScanned, where Garth Brooks's earlier Wal-Mart exclusives were not. (Not sure whether Wal-Mart wasn't reporting at all before, or whether Garth had been a special case.)

(Though SoundScan sales figures, even for Wal-Mart exclusives, aren't the same as $ profits, obviously.)

Have the dollar increases kept up with the inflation rate? (I haven't done the math, but somebody can):

http://www.inflationdata.com/inflation/inflation_rate/CurrentInflation.asp

would love to see percentages of various albums' sales/acquisitions for these methods:
- major store (e.g. HMV) full price sales
- supermarket/discount store sales
- major online store sales
- small/chart-ineligible online store sales
- used/second hand sales
- online download sales (whole album only)
- unauthorised/free/illegal downloads
- other (inc. bootleg/pirate CD sales)

"In 2008, the music industry is doomed...or is it?"

Really who cares? I mean does anyone actually think that a bunch of suits and A&R guys is going to result in less good music being available or maybe all but 1% of musicians actually making less money?

ahe *that the loss of a bunch*

The Ramones went shit after Rocket to Russia

would love to see percentages of various albums' sales/acquisitions for these methods

That would be interesting, yes, but also tough (especially the illegal sales.)

Nielsen tracks by region, and by four retail categories (indie stores, mass merchants, chain stores, and "non-traditional retailers," the latter of which includes digital sales, online sales, record club sales, 1-800 sales, Starbucks, etc., and it's the only one of the four retail sectors that's been showing consistent growth; Nielsen can also separate digital sales from other non-traditional.)

But that's as granular as it gets. Josh Groban's Christmas album, the biggest selling album of 2007, did really well at Mass Merchants (a category that includes Wal-Mart and Target), and not so great digitally. And I expect the labels took note of that.

illegal sales

(and illegal non-sales, for that matter)

though the dollar figure difference is not nearly +14%, obviously

Right. But neither is it -14% (or any significant number).

Bump a dump. Alex's point is surely the default for a lot of us but at the same time I've heard arguments -- from utter non-admirers of the major label system -- that a flawed structure you know how to deal with and/or work through and around still provides something more than absolutely nothing at all.

The current model will fall apart. Something else will arise in its place because too many people like music.

there's no doubt that there's simply less space in print media, for people who write about, say, music and the decline of the music biz. no depression is a case--and i have written for them for a few years--where a print medium actually predicted the current state of affairs in a sector of the music biz that is in my opinion pretty fucking healthy (americana/roots music that bleeds over often into country which is pretty healthy too). that's what nashville as a center of people doing business is all about at the moment--just as nashville continues to defy the supposed recessive housing-bubble tendencies of most american cities, if you believe the doomsayers totally, the music biz there thrives because of the conjunction that no depression predicted, perhaps helped create and certainly codified, of 'mericana and country and belated roots and post-punk-indie whatever. all of which is happening in nashville--plus, it has a good record store that thrives because it's in a place where the confluence, etc. so probably i'd break the music biz down to country and country-related stuff and then everything else, and probably country remains a relatively conventional business model in many ways, lotsa records sold at wal-mart and target, not as much downloading, etc. traditional labels doing what labels do, unless things are really different at columbia nashville or whoever. or arista.

for example, now that nd has folded, at least in its print edition (and the magazine was heavily art-directed and looked great and that was obviously a part of what its creators wanted it to be, old-fashioned stuff print once did), where can you read any intelligent writing on country music? in mass-market print, that is--the alts still do a decent job in some outlets, i write about alan jackson and trent willmon and those guys as both a critic and someone who tries to make sense of the business, it's a business. but have the other big print music mags ever done it? not so much. nd did it and often quite well and always seriously and well-informedly, they took it seriously.

where i'd be a luddite myself would be to basically decry the american idol mentality, which has infected "country" music for a long time, i mean i enjoy carrie underwood records but ultimately, it doesn't mean much beyond expertise of the moment, does it? i don't think it does. the stakes for country music as economics are inflated now to the point that it's obviously good for sectors of the industry--it's good for wal-mart who don't need it--and probably not so good for other stuff. i'd love to know how much a really successful indie band like black mountain or the shins sell--i think the band of horses CDs sold like 40,000 or maybe a bit lower each? so these were the labels, like bloodshot, sub pop, and the like, who were advertising in no depression hotly but now aren't. whatever, as christgau said, it's a shame and points out the difficulty of financing stuff you'd think you could do at some level for such a historically minded enterprise...

i'd love to know how much a really successful indie band like black mountain or the shins sell

The Shins 2007 disc sold slightly more than 100,000 copies in its first week and that was considered a big deal.

black mountain probably nowhere near Shins level though, right?

I mean there's a big difference between being the new hot thing and basically being kings of the indie world (and a difference between being on Jagjaguwar and Sub-Pop)

Does anyone have any insight into why there have been so many layoffs at the majors, esp. given the numbers above?

Fewer peons to pay equals more profit for the big guns.

I sent this out on a private mailing list the other day as a response/delivery to a piece, included below, published in the afternoon at the LA Times. The next day the paper put it on the frontpage of the delivered edition. The Times' music biz writers have been emphasizing generational split in their stories on music sales. Basically, a large part of the message is that only duffers buy music in physical form. There's much truth to some of it but it's not the entire truth. It's also true there's a class split.

=========
The report underlined a generational split." That and a class split in the so-called "class-less society." Apple vs. Wal-Mart demography. Wal-Mart is still the number one seller of CDs. And sales are greater than at its digital store. And Wal-Mart's customers include teenagers. But Wal-Mart's "customers" skew significantly poorer. They don't pervasively have free broadband, therefore they cannot steal gobs of music. /snark on/I support laws to make children pay their own broadband or a flat entertainment tax./snark off/ Alternatively, an entertainment tax could also be levied on broadband providers, since they're rolling in it and they're middlemen. Or even more realistically, broadband providers could scan what's going across their networks and radically pinch speeds on users downloading Mp3 content. Some of this is being done a bit surreptitiously already and when it's outed people start whining about net neutrality being entitled as if it's a civil right. Paradoxically, it's not those who don't have money who steal the most. It's the middle-class with a big sense of entitlement and little or no noblesse oblige.

LA Times original

SAN FRANCISCO -- Nearly half of all teenagers bought no compact discs in 2007, accelerating the music industry's painful transition from CDs to digital downloads, according to a report released today.

One big beneficiary: Apple Inc. Its iTunes music store, which sells only digital downloads, jumped ahead of Best Buy Co. to become the No. 2 U.S. music seller. Apple trailed only Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which mostly sells CDs.

The music industry has grappled with how to replace its rapidly disappearing CD sales with digital downloads. The report by research firm NPD Group offered a window into how quickly the change was happening and who was leading it.

The amount of music legally bought from online music stores was up -- 29 million people bought music online last year, a 21% jump from 24 million in 2006. But that boost didn't offset the drop in CD sales and the effects of people illegally downloading music. Last year, about 1 million consumers stopped buying CDs, according to NPD.

Going to a store and buying a CD is no longer a rite of passage for many teenagers. But illegally downloading a song might be. Last year, 48% of teenagers did not buy a single CD, compared with 38% in 2006. And illegally downloading music continued to grow among teenagers, the report said.

The average Internet user acquired 6% more music last year via legal downloads, CDs and illegal file-sharing, the report said. But they spent 10% less on music -- $40 per user, compared with $44 a year before.

Going to a store and buying a CD is no longer a rite of passage for many teenagers. But illegally downloading a song might be. Last year, 48% of teenagers did not buy a single CD, compared with 38% in 2006. And illegally downloading music continued to grow among teenagers, the report said.

The average Internet user acquired 6% more music last year via legal downloads, CDs and illegal file-sharing, the report said. But they spent 10% less on music -- $40 per user, compared with $44 a year before.

The report underlined a generational split. The increase in legal online sales was driven by people age 36 to 50, the report said, giving the music industry an opportunity to target these customers by tapping into its older catalogs.