Mar
6
U.S. Record Industry Lost 24 Million Customers From 2007 to 2009
Filed Under Compact Disc News, Distributor News, Industry News, Music Retail News | Leave a Comment
The NPD Group’s Russ Crupnick presented some insightful data on U.S. music purchases from 2007 to 2009. Here are the numbers:
24 million fewer people bought music in 2009 compared to 2007.
From 2007 to 2009, there were 33 million fewer CD buyers in the U.S. and 24 million fewer music buyers in total, a 21% decrease.
As the number of music buyers declined, the average amount spent by each buyer rose 2%. That implies a 19% drop in total music spending over those two years, according to Billboard’s calculations.
On the other hand, Digital spending rose 52% to $50 a year per digital buyer.
They really are eating us alive, folks. Lets cross our fingers and toes and hope that people would buy more music this year.
Jan
21
CD Baby sees 28% growth
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Yeah baby, CD Baby sees expansion in 2008. 200,000 artists saw success with CD Baby last year, according to Tony Van Veen, CEO of Audio & Video Labs, the parent company of CD baby. Success is possible if you have the heart, it appears.
According to reports, CD Baby artists sold about 1.01 million CDs in 2008, compared to .99 million in 2007. In addition, the company added 39,100 new titles added in 2008, up 7% from the previous year.
Many more stats and fun factoids available at the CD Baby forums.
Dec
4
The promo CD gravy train
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Randall Roberts of LA weekly pens a fascinating tell all, expose, or confession, whatever you want to call it, covering the promo CD racket that sits beneath the music reviewer industry.
What on earth do those guys do with their piles of free CDs? The answer is probably a surprise to few who frequent used record stores: they’re sold. The thing is, nobody ever talks about it. Roberts was even asked not to publish his report by an interviewee, thinking it might put an end to his sweet gravy train.
The bounty therefore becomes something you have to deal with, like a farmer stuck with molding grain as winter approaches.
So then what? Do you throw it away, and let all that plastic end up in a landfill? Do you donate it to Goodwill, where some thrifty hipster will buy it for cheap? Do you give it to your friends? Do you sell it?
Often, nudge-nudge, wink-wink, the so-called “tastemakers” do just that. Of course, finding anybody in the music business to actually talk about this vast and ever-fluctuating underground economy is tough. Ask a publicist what he does with unwanted promos and there’s usually an awkward pause, as though you’d just asked after his porno collection.
Confessions of a Promo-CD Junkie: Who Will Stop the Music Industry Gravy Train?
Dec
4
Distributor and label Creative Vibes packs it in
Filed Under Compact Disc News, Distributor News | Leave a Comment
After more than 15 years as an innovative Australian music company, Creative Vibes has called it quits. Their mission statement claims the company to be inspired purely by music, set out to make sure that music shops, music media and above all, music lovers got to hear and learn about the many brilliant, but non-mainstream artists from all over the world.
Founders Gordon Henderson, Peter Pasqual and Heidi Pasqual had this to say about the downfall of less than integrated businesses:
Sadly though, as a truly independent company we just can’t compete with large companies and multinational companies supplying everything from music to computers and electrical items, to give retailers what they now need to stay in business and sell good music at the same time.
The majority of our business is in imported music which has always funded our investments in emerging, Australian artists. Because of the recent, drastic drop in the value of the Australian dollar, combined with the spiralling demand for discounts and deals, we can’t get the margin out of our imports to sustain the development of our local releases.
Dec
4
Take That
England’s Take That’s latest album, “The Circus”, rocked the music and CD world selling 133,000 copies on it’s first day. They beat out Coldplay’s new album for the biggest single day of the year.
Great news for us CD junkies!
Nov
26
Paul McCartney’s “The Fireman”
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The Fireman
McCartney, along with producer Youth, released a new album with a distribution model that while relatively new, is becoming more commonplace. It is a former major label artist, self-releasing music over the Internet with the option of purchase either in digital form, or digital + traditional media.
McCartney’s website provides opportunities to purchase the album for $8.99 in high quality, DRM free format. Or if you prefer, $12.99, $29.99, or $79.99 options for CD, vinyl, or deluxe edition, respectively, all of which come with an immediate download option for the impatient among us. The album can also be streamed in its entirety straight from the website.
