"The music business historically has been built around albums...This album-centrism is like saying the sun revolves around the Earth. We don't listen to albums now; we listen to collections of songs."
Tom Silverman (chairman and CEO of Tommy Boy Records) and Eric Garland ( CEO of Big Champagne) made their own State of the Music Industry address as a sly way to introduce their creation, the Ultimate Chart. But the data they presented shows an industry in flux.
A shift from albums to singles They claim of the some 100,000 albums released last year, 17,000 of them sold only 1 copy - I find that to be absolute bullshit. You mean to tell me that 17,000 performers (and really more, because many of those were likely multiperson bands) don't know more than one person , and didn't convince them to purchase an album? I don't by it. More than 81,000 albums sold under 100 copies, well, that I'm not surprised and makes more sense. One of my former instructors from the music business mentioned that 99% of the albums released don't recoup their costs to the record companies. Barely 1,300 albums sold over 10,000 copies, and that's between physical units and digital album sales. Only 2% of new albums (tracked with Soundscan) sold over 5,000 physical copies.
Tom Silverman (chairman and CEO of Tommy Boy Records) and Eric Garland ( CEO of Big Champagne) made their own State of the Music Industry address as a sly way to introduce their creation, the Ultimate Chart. But the data they presented shows an industry in flux.
A shift from albums to singles They claim of the some 100,000 albums released last year, 17,000 of them sold only 1 copy - I find that to be absolute bullshit. You mean to tell me that 17,000 performers (and really more, because many of those were likely multiperson bands) don't know more than one person , and didn't convince them to purchase an album? I don't by it. More than 81,000 albums sold under 100 copies, well, that I'm not surprised and makes more sense. One of my former instructors from the music business mentioned that 99% of the albums released don't recoup their costs to the record companies. Barely 1,300 albums sold over 10,000 copies, and that's between physical units and digital album sales. Only 2% of new albums (tracked with Soundscan) sold over 5,000 physical copies.
They attributed the (per-song growth and) album sale depression due in part to iTunes and other online sales outlets selling every song as a single for 99 cents. "Historically, the price of an album was five times greater than a single," said Silverman, who feels setting the price at a tenth of an album's cost was a mistake. "It should've been a $1.99, and then we would've seen higher digital album sales because it would've been a bigger discount for buying an album." However companies like Universal Music have hit about 14% for complete digital albums sales, suggesting the $9.99 price is right with consumers.
Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter The new figure that is being looked at nearly more than sales are "FFF numbers" - an artist's friends, fans, and followers. All three websites are indicators of the reach that musicians have. On one hand the data show how extensive musical acts are saturating the public, but some of the info is inaccurate. Recently, Facebook forced most users to convert their profile favorites into "fan" data - and adding an act as a friend made the user a fan and didn't really indicate any consumer activity.
Google and YouTube more important than iTunes It wasn't Apple that was viewed as the most important name in music, even though iPods, iPhones, and iTunes are hot music portals. Looking at where people are listening to music—not even just looking at videos — people are turning more and more to YouTube, which they calls the "largest catalog of on-demand music on the Internet."Internet radio Pandora is now the most popular Internet radio service, with a 52% market share, close to 60 million registered users, and more than 1 billion stations, as if we needed 492 Limp Bizkit channels. Overall, internet radio is still tiny, as Pandora represents under 2% of all radio listening, but let's not marginalize 60 million as a figure.
None of these things is a surprise to me, especially as a musician with some web savvy, but to the general public this may be news. I have been saying it for years how the industry has been fucking itself by pushing mediocre acts that don't have real talent or more than one or two songs, and for it's own ineptitude I'm thrilled at their continued implosion. But since they are only interested in sales, the growing singles market is their only real way to stay in the red, and it only creates more shitty music, and an album of garbage surrounding a decent track or two.
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