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ivan@stellysee.de
| From | "josh chasin" <jchasin@nyc.rr.com> |
| Subject | Re: CD sales in 2003 |
| Date | Thu, 19 Feb 2004 15:50:32 -0500 |
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Stewart Mason" <flamingo@theworld.com>
> Also, despite the industry's continued poor-mouthing, last week set a
sales
> record, according to a story I read on E! Online: "Fueled by the Norah
> Factor, the post-Grammy album rush and Valentine's Day, more than 8
million
> albums were sold last week, the biggest selling five-day period (not
> counting the November-December Yuletide season) registered since Nielsen
> SoundScan began tracking in 1991."
And this also totally ignores a separate phenomenon-- that fragmentation
among the music market (e.g. major labels merging and dropping artists, who
then use alternative distribution modes; consumers buying discs at shows or
online from small retailers and the artist directly) means that many units
shifted are not making SoundScan at all. I have long wondered (as a
marketing and media research professional with a passing interest in music)
whether we're seeing a slump in the sales of pre-recorded music, or just a
shift in the % of such music sold through non-SoundScan channels. When I
look at the music I buy by year, there is a definite increase in the
percentage of non-SoundScan channel purchases since 1991.
Just anecdotally, I was talking to my sister's sister-in-law (I'm still not
clear if that makes us related or not) who lives in a rural area in upstate
NY. I was asking what music they listen to, and her and her partner said,
after naming a few artists, that they listened to a lot of CDs they bought
at shows from local artists playing the cafe in town.
Are we really buying less music-- or just less big label product that is
easily tracked?
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