Troll
01-05-2006, 10:21am
Album sales drop in '05 as legal downloads soar
Country music purchases off 3.3% but top all genres except one
By RYAN UNDERWOOD
Staff Writer
Sales of country music albums dipped 3.3% last year, but it could have been a lot worse.
Buffeted by a huge increase in legal downloads of individual songs, traditional album sales across virtually all genres of music fell 7.2%.
Industry experts blamed everything from higher gasoline prices siphoning off consumers' discretionary income to younger consumers cherry-picking the music they want off the Internet instead of plunking down bigger bucks for CDs in brick and mortar stores.
The data was included in a year-end report issued by sales tracking firm Nielsen SoundScan yesterday.
The good news was that overall sales of CDs, ringtones, albums and digital downloads passed the 1 billion mark in 2005, climbing 22% in terms of units sold thanks to the rapid expansion of digital offerings.
Sales of digital albums and tracks soared by triple-digit percentages last year, offering industry insiders a fresh plate of data on the impact of the paid download market.
One downside to the digital bonanza, though, is that the sale of single tracks generally brings only a few pennies compared with CDs that sell for $15 to $20.
With album sales down and digital sales way up, what is Music Row and the rest of the music industry to make of this news?
"Bottom line: It was a down year," said Geoff Mayfield, director of charts and senior analyst for Billboard magazine, pointing out that high gas prices may have affected entertainment spending.
"Spinning it as anything but that would be like gift wrapping the garbage," he said.
While sales of digital tracks — downloaded from pay sites — shot up 150% to 352.7 million units in 2005, and digital album sales went up 194% to 16.2 million, Mayfield pointed out that compared with the rest of the industry's sales, digital remains a drop in the bucket in terms of revenue for the overall music market.
"Not to diminish digital sales, but what tends to get forgotten is that CDs still comprise the vast majority of the money that's being made for record companies," he said. Year-end numbers on revenue were not available yesterday.
Total album sales in 2005 came in at 618.9 million units, according to the Nielsen SoundScan report. Digital albums, for all their percentage gains in recent years, sold 16.2 million units in 2005. That amounted to just 2.6% of total album sales.
And even though 352.7 million digital tracks were sold last year, the total revenue they bring in (at a sales price of 99 cents a song) pales in comparison with CDs, which typically cost around $15. SoundScan collects data only on the number of units sold by music retailers and does not track revenue information.
In terms of albums sold, even though country sales slipped, the genre still managed to finish at No. 2 behind Latin music, which saw a 12.6% increase and was the only genre to see its sales increase. Christian/gospel album sales were off by 8.1% for the year.
The big question mark for all genres is whether the increase in downloaded music is enough to offset the sizable decrease in album sales. Nielsen SoundScan also does not break down digital sales by genre, making it impossible to understand how much of the album sales slack is being taken up by downloading in a particular musical niche.
For instance, with country album sales down 3.3%, it's unclear whether Music Row had an off year altogether or if digital sales were enough to fill that gap.
One other complicating factor for country is that a Garth Brooks boxed set sold exclusively at Wal-Mart for the holidays was not included in SoundScan numbers.
The retailer reported last month that the set had sold more than a million copies, and various reports put the number as high as 2 million to 2.5 million. The inclusion of those sales could have pushed this year's country numbers closer to last year's country album sales of 77.9 million.
One category that may have a better answer to how much of an impact digital sales are having on its volume is Christian/gospel. Unit sales for that genre are reported separately by the Christian Music Trade Association in partnership with Nielsen Christian SoundScan.
In that report, released yesterday, sales in the genre, including digital tracks and albums, rose 2.4% to 43.5 million units.
"Gospel music held its own in 2005, maintaining its album market share in an overall music industry that was down in sales," said John W. Styll, president of the Nashville-based Gospel Music Association, in a release announcing the year-end figures.
Styll was traveling outside the country yesterday and couldn't be reached for further comment.
The Country Music Association, which had high hopes for the year after getting significant national media exposure when it held this year's awards show in New York, had no comment.
A CMA spokeswoman said the association was preparing its own report, which is scheduled for release tomorrow — or early next week — that will include revenue figures for music sales and artist tours.
Two country stars landed a spot on SoundScan's 2005 top 10 selling artists list: Kenny Chesney at No. 4 and Toby Keith at No. 9. Rascal Flatts' album Feels Like Today came in No. 7 on the top 10 selling albums for the year.
Two digital songs broke the 1 million sales mark in 2005: Hollaback Girl by Gwen Stefani (1,172,000) and Gold Digger by Kanye West (1,080,000). No country stars made it onto the top-selling digital lists.
But Shania Twain's Come On Over finished as the top-selling album of the SoundScan era, 1991-2006, with 15,355,018 units sold.
http://www.rctimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060105/BUSINESS11/601050396/1005/MTCN0303
Country music purchases off 3.3% but top all genres except one
By RYAN UNDERWOOD
Staff Writer
Sales of country music albums dipped 3.3% last year, but it could have been a lot worse.
Buffeted by a huge increase in legal downloads of individual songs, traditional album sales across virtually all genres of music fell 7.2%.
Industry experts blamed everything from higher gasoline prices siphoning off consumers' discretionary income to younger consumers cherry-picking the music they want off the Internet instead of plunking down bigger bucks for CDs in brick and mortar stores.
The data was included in a year-end report issued by sales tracking firm Nielsen SoundScan yesterday.
The good news was that overall sales of CDs, ringtones, albums and digital downloads passed the 1 billion mark in 2005, climbing 22% in terms of units sold thanks to the rapid expansion of digital offerings.
Sales of digital albums and tracks soared by triple-digit percentages last year, offering industry insiders a fresh plate of data on the impact of the paid download market.
One downside to the digital bonanza, though, is that the sale of single tracks generally brings only a few pennies compared with CDs that sell for $15 to $20.
With album sales down and digital sales way up, what is Music Row and the rest of the music industry to make of this news?
"Bottom line: It was a down year," said Geoff Mayfield, director of charts and senior analyst for Billboard magazine, pointing out that high gas prices may have affected entertainment spending.
"Spinning it as anything but that would be like gift wrapping the garbage," he said.
While sales of digital tracks — downloaded from pay sites — shot up 150% to 352.7 million units in 2005, and digital album sales went up 194% to 16.2 million, Mayfield pointed out that compared with the rest of the industry's sales, digital remains a drop in the bucket in terms of revenue for the overall music market.
"Not to diminish digital sales, but what tends to get forgotten is that CDs still comprise the vast majority of the money that's being made for record companies," he said. Year-end numbers on revenue were not available yesterday.
Total album sales in 2005 came in at 618.9 million units, according to the Nielsen SoundScan report. Digital albums, for all their percentage gains in recent years, sold 16.2 million units in 2005. That amounted to just 2.6% of total album sales.
And even though 352.7 million digital tracks were sold last year, the total revenue they bring in (at a sales price of 99 cents a song) pales in comparison with CDs, which typically cost around $15. SoundScan collects data only on the number of units sold by music retailers and does not track revenue information.
In terms of albums sold, even though country sales slipped, the genre still managed to finish at No. 2 behind Latin music, which saw a 12.6% increase and was the only genre to see its sales increase. Christian/gospel album sales were off by 8.1% for the year.
The big question mark for all genres is whether the increase in downloaded music is enough to offset the sizable decrease in album sales. Nielsen SoundScan also does not break down digital sales by genre, making it impossible to understand how much of the album sales slack is being taken up by downloading in a particular musical niche.
For instance, with country album sales down 3.3%, it's unclear whether Music Row had an off year altogether or if digital sales were enough to fill that gap.
One other complicating factor for country is that a Garth Brooks boxed set sold exclusively at Wal-Mart for the holidays was not included in SoundScan numbers.
The retailer reported last month that the set had sold more than a million copies, and various reports put the number as high as 2 million to 2.5 million. The inclusion of those sales could have pushed this year's country numbers closer to last year's country album sales of 77.9 million.
One category that may have a better answer to how much of an impact digital sales are having on its volume is Christian/gospel. Unit sales for that genre are reported separately by the Christian Music Trade Association in partnership with Nielsen Christian SoundScan.
In that report, released yesterday, sales in the genre, including digital tracks and albums, rose 2.4% to 43.5 million units.
"Gospel music held its own in 2005, maintaining its album market share in an overall music industry that was down in sales," said John W. Styll, president of the Nashville-based Gospel Music Association, in a release announcing the year-end figures.
Styll was traveling outside the country yesterday and couldn't be reached for further comment.
The Country Music Association, which had high hopes for the year after getting significant national media exposure when it held this year's awards show in New York, had no comment.
A CMA spokeswoman said the association was preparing its own report, which is scheduled for release tomorrow — or early next week — that will include revenue figures for music sales and artist tours.
Two country stars landed a spot on SoundScan's 2005 top 10 selling artists list: Kenny Chesney at No. 4 and Toby Keith at No. 9. Rascal Flatts' album Feels Like Today came in No. 7 on the top 10 selling albums for the year.
Two digital songs broke the 1 million sales mark in 2005: Hollaback Girl by Gwen Stefani (1,172,000) and Gold Digger by Kanye West (1,080,000). No country stars made it onto the top-selling digital lists.
But Shania Twain's Come On Over finished as the top-selling album of the SoundScan era, 1991-2006, with 15,355,018 units sold.
http://www.rctimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060105/BUSINESS11/601050396/1005/MTCN0303