So let us talk about sales of audio mediums and why the music industry is not going anywhere any time soon. I will try to keep my reasons and such, though opinion based, as unbiased and as educated as I can. Please keep in mind that my opinions for stating the reasons for changes in the industry are based on sales and opinions working at a used CD shop in Cambridge and should be seen as an idea or argument. Do not use this blog as any sort of absolute fact on anything, but especially this piece. The charts the actual numbers come from will be linked at the end.
The thing that gets brought up oh-so-often at my cash counter is "isn't the music industry dying?" and "why not just download everything?" Well, the easy reply to the downloading idea is that it is still illegal most places and most websites do not want to get caught in the crossfire. When people bring up places like iTunes and (legal) Napster, opinions and feelings often become thrown around as fact.
The first point I would like to make is that the music industry would not bother if it was not profitable. It is far too early in the year to have any sort of fair comparison to last years numbers, so let us pretend it is closer to January. Physical sales are down from a sudden peak in the year prior and digital sales are spiking from a very low 2011. Physical medium sales are still 80 million units outselling digital distribution. Now, would those sales go to digital if there was not an option for physical sale? I have a couple of customers who come to our store from the country who can barely get internet access. Would these people be able to switch to digital? Obviously not. Now, I am aware that the few customers I mention is not enough to even make the industry bat an eyelash, so I'm going to bring up some census information! YAY CANADIAN CENCUS!
A study done in 2010 shows that 1 in 5 Canadians do not have internet access (so just over 6.8 million Canadians). With Canadian physical purchasing sitting at 20.5 million last year and digital sitting just over 10 million, and assuming we go by the idea that 0.9 albums sell per person, would mean a decrease in sales by 6.12 million albums. The average price of a new CD at my work is approximately $15 dollars. This would mean a loss of 91.8 million dollars in revenue. Now factor in people like me: I do not download albums from iTunes unless I have to and I never purchase one off songs because the album is what is important to me. When you compile all the numbers, it will cost the music industry less to press CDs than they will loose in total sales.
Signs that the physical age will be on its way out? Price hikes would be one, and rarity of mainstream albums being another. I feel as though we would see Wal*Mart stop carrying CDs long before HMV went out of business, but we might see random pop albums all of a sudden become very difficult to find. Though I can no longer find the information on the actual situation, who remembers the Warner snafu? Warner went through some huge reconstruction thing at the corporate level and threw their distribution of music into the strangest tither. Customers would be able to find some WMG merchandise at my store, but not at the HMV in the mall behind us. Kitchener would be the only city in all Ontario to have Lykki Li, for instance. It was awkward to explain the situation to those who were just looking for that new release and it seemed to get fixed out of nowhere. There were a couple of us who started speculating a digital only push in cities. If it was an experiment, the consequence was the loss of thousands of sales..
What about vinyl? At one time is was viewed as the dominant source for quality of sound. People still spend tens of thousands of dollars getting setups and rooms for perfect acoustics. Audiophiles will always be around for every medium, but vinyl was always viewed as the "purists" form. This grand resurgence has been great for people who just prefer the sound and feel but did not want to give a million and one reasons every time a friend came by. It has now become accepted as just another medium to a huge part of the market and, with sales increasing in double digit percents every year, that market has become bigger and bigger. We now have Record Store Day with sale numbers that almost double every year. I personally do not think that vinyl will ever be the dominant form of music distribution ever again, but what a fantastic decade for vinyl to come back!
Before I wrap up, I would like to mention song sales. This is a fairly new idea, since singles from the days of old always came bundled with a couple of perks. When you purchase a song from iTunes at a dollar, 30 cents goes to Apple and 60 cents to the distributer. The total number of songs sold in 2012 was 1336 million. The cost for an indi artist to upload a song to iTunes using TuneCore is $9.99 per year. With these numbers, I am having a very hard time why anyone thinks the music industry is hurting.
Website used and not tagged already :
This article had a nice collection of charts with all the sale information from 2012 and 2011. Very informative and just kind of cool to read over.
During the writing of this, I was enjoying 2 records: Do Make Say Think Goodbye Enemy Airship the Landlord is Dead and John Coltrane's A Love Supreme. Both seminal albums in their genres and two of my favourite albums of all time. Please, as music fans, check into these.
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