State of the Music Industry
There's a fascinating and informative slide deck from Nielsen SoundScan called the State of the Industry that was presented at NARM last week. Some highlights:
Music is really long tail - in 2007, 450,344 of the 570,000 albums sold were purchased less than 100 times. 1,000 albums accounted for 50% of all album sales. The music industry had its biggest sales week since they started keeping records, with 58 million units sold in the last week of 2007. The previous record was 47 million during the last week of 2006. 13% of all album sales come from American Idol and the Disney franchises.There's lots more data in there. Definitely worth a good look. - Thanks OscarCD sales are down 31% since 2004, but digital music sales are up 490%. Surprisingly, Vinyl sales are coming back - they grew 15% in 2007 and are up 70% in the first 3 months of this year. Mostly in indie vinyl. 1 out of 4 albums are purchased in a non-traditional retail store (i.e. internet, or at a concert). 80,000 albums were released in 2007 844 million digital tracks sold in 2007, 1% of all digital tracks accounted for 80% of all track sales.