wax&wires

The news on album sales hasn’t changed much over the past decade or so… you could sum it all up in one word, DOWN. Interestingly enough, we saw a bit of slowing to the downturn this past quarter, but don’t count on it for the future.

Sticking with the new shorter format, I give a quick rundown of what iTunes LP brings to the table, what works and what doesn’t. Can it resurrect album sales in a digital market?

It’s official. 1 in every 4 songs purchased today is purchased on iTunes. Are you surprised?

It’s no surprise that U2’s new album, No Line On The Horizon rocketed to number one after its first week on store shelves, selling 484,000 copies; but how does that really stack up to prior number ones?

I found this over at wired.com and thought it was pretty interesting.
Remember that song Peaches from way back when? What about Lump, or my personal favorite, Dune Buggy? I can recall my Jr. High P.E. class having the Presidents of the United States of America album on heavy rotation while we stair-stepped our way to [...]

The struggling music units of Sony Corp. and Bertelsmann AG merged in 2004 so that a combined company could better fend off illegal file sharing and shrinking CD sales.
The new recording company, named Sony BMG, was expected to wield the kind of resources that could challenge Universal Music Group as the largest of the four [...]

Would you pay a couple hundred dollars for every CD and DVD a label is going to release this coming year, sight unseen?
Indie label Equal Vision Records is asking fans to do just that. With the launch of EVR365, fans can select from 3 packages allowing them to get prereleased copies of EVR albums through [...]

Hot off the heels of yesterday’s news that the RIAA cannot base penalties on the cost of copywritten property itself, the net is buzzing with talk on the state of the music industry and how to make money in it during these tough times. Labels are looking for new and better ways to make money [...]

US District Judge James P. Jones has ruled that copyright holders cannot equate each illegal download with a lost sale. Just because somebody downloaded your song, doesn’t mean that they would have purchased it otherwise. Practically what that means is that you cannot seek restitution based on the amount that hypothetically would have been gained [...]

IMAGE: Declan McCullagh PhotographyI was just in LA last night for the live Diggnation and Digg meetup. My wife and I left The Knitting Factory around 10 PM or so and proceeded to stroll around downtown looking for a good place to grab a bite. It was pretty dead out. Baristas were stacking chairs on [...]

Nielsen just released the numbers for 2008 recorded music sales a few days ago, and there’s a few of noteworthy points. Many feared that the increased use of P2P networks would cripple music purchases, but through many mediums, there was actually growth from 2007.

• Overall music sales ROSE over 10%. That includes albums, singles, music videos, digital tracks, etc. with 1,513,000,000 units sold. This was the big relief, as it shows signs of life in an industry feared to be treading water at best.
• Total album sales DROPPED 14%. That includes CDs, LPs, digital albums, etc. Internet album sales, being physical albums purchased through online retailers, declined by close to 9%, which I’m sure contributed to that 14% overall drop. Digital album sales, being non-physical albums downloaded from various online retailers, ROSE 32%. Even with that sharp increase in digital album sales, it wasn’t enough to curb the loss from physical album sales online or in brick and mortar shops.
• Vinyl is back! The number of vinyl units sold rose by close to 90% over 2007 figures.
• Digital track sales rose close to 30% between 2007 and 2008.

So what do these numbers point to?