More dramatic evidence of the decline of the music industry. The amount of sales needed to qualify an album as a top-seller has dropped by two-thirds since 2000. The number one CD in 2009 sold less than the number ten CD a decade earlier, despite population growth.
Nielsen/Soundscan collects sales data from 14,000 retail, mass merchant, and non-traditional outlets (such as on-line stores and digital music services) in the United States, Canada and U.K., according to Wikipedia. Billboard reports these rankings weekly. [Read more →]
Tags: The state of music by Jon O
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Independent music source CD Baby recently posted a blog article, “Has the Internet Really Destroyed the Music Business?”, citing negative comments from John Mellencamp and Stevie Nicks as the latest salvos about the current state of music in the digital age. After pointing out that these stars made a lot of money under the old music business model (which were never golden days, to be sure), CD Baby does some cheerleading for the new, egalitarian model where “there’s at least a spot on the couch” for everybody. [Read more →]
In a study published in Science in 2006 (“Experimental Study of Inequality and Unpredictability in an Artificial Cultural Market”), Princeton sociologist Matthew Salganik and his coauthors revealed how the opinions of others influence the popularity of a song. That’s not surprising, you might say, but the surprise was the extent to which popularity was actually controlled by a factor that had nothing to do with musical content. The identical song could be a hit or a failure simply depending on whether listeners saw that other people had downloaded it. 
The New Yorker has published some great articles about the music industry this past year. Case in point: “The Price of the Ticket,” by John Seabrook (Aug. 10 & 17, 2009). Seabrook discusses the business of concert tickets, exemplified by everyone’s favorite bad guy, Ticketmaster. Who doesn’t resent those outrageous “convenience” fees and additional charges? But the problem goes beyond that. As Seabrook points out, the business of live music is dysfunctional. 
