Author: JD

ONE THING I NOTICE ABOUT MY GLOBAL14 CREW IS THAT YALL HAVE ALOT TO SAY ABOUT ALL THINGS BUT ESPECIALLY WHEN IT COMES TO DIGITAL AND THE VIRAL WORLD. SO HOW DO YALL FEEL ABOUT THIS AND WHY DO YOU THINK PEOPLE ARE BACK BUYING ACTUAL CDS? Q1 Sales: Physical Decline Slows, Digital Drops The good news in 2010? The decline in album sales is slowing. The bad news? For the first time since digital tracks took off in 2003, a quarter has closed on a down note. With the first quarter of 2010 now completed album sales were down 8.3% to 75.1 million units from the 81.9 million scanned during the corresponding period in 2009, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Album sales slipped 13.5% between 2009 and 2008 when sales were 104.5 million units. If digital track equivalent albums are added to the mix, then album sales are down 6.3% to 104.1 million units from the 111.1 million copies scanned last year. Track sales declined to 289.7 million units, down nearly 1% (0.8%) from the 292.1 million units scanned last year during the first quarter. (In order to accommodate an oranges-to-oranges, 12-week comparison, SoundScan has eliminated sales from the first week of 2009, ending Jan. 4, since this year the first week of 2010 began on Jan. 4 and ended Jan. 10.) Executives ascribe declining track sales to a number of reasons, including variable pricing implement at iTunes. While consumers will still buy hit songs for $1.29, it seems that catalog tracks priced at that level are not selling as well as they were at 99 cents. Industry executives also say that album sales have been strengthened by a robust release schedule in the first quarter. Marketshare Universal Music Group leads the pack in marketshare for albums, including track equivalents, with a 30.1% share, which is down from the 31.5% in notched in the first quarter of 2009. Warner Music Group also lost marketshare as it finished Q1 2010 with 19.2% slice of the market, down from the 20.7% it had in 2009’s corresponding period. On the upswing, both the Sony Music Group and EMI picked up market-share gains. The former, Sony Music, added two percentage points growing to 27.9%, up from the 25.9% it had in the first quarter of 2009, while EMI almost jumped two percentage points to 10.5 from the 8.6% the company had in the earlier period. Retail In examining where album sales occur, the chain category, which includes webs like Best Buy, Borders and Trans World, suffered a 34.2% decline to 17.5 million units in the first quarter as compared to 26.7 million scans in Q1 2009. Mass merchants like Wal-Mart and Target also experienced shrinking marketshare as the declined 5.2% to 24.9 million from 26.3 million units. Non-traditional, which includes iTunes, Amazon, QVC and concert hall sales, grew 13.3% to 26.6 million from the 23.5 million units. Also on the upswing, independents posted a 10.3% gain in album sales to a little more than 6 million units, up from the 5.5 million that category scanned last year. (But there’s a hitch: That increase can be explained by the shift of smaller chains like Newbury Comics and local chains like Gallery of Sound being moved out of the chain category and into the independent segment. That change occurred at the start of this year, and their sales couldn’t be backed out of last year’s numbers.)