Trends News

UK Vinyl Record Sales Jump 55% so Far This Year, U.S. Vinyl Sales up 37%

Source: HypeBot
August 16, 2011

(UPDATED) Sales of vinyl records totalled 168,296 units for the first half of 2011, according to new data released today by Retail Gazette. That's a 55% rise compared to the first six months of 2010. Radiohead's King of Limbs was the most popular vinyl album release in the last six months of 2011 for the format shifting 20,771 copies. In the U.S., 3.6 million LPs were sold in the first half of this year According to Nielsen SoundScan. That's  a ...

Continue Reading

Spotify Responds to Century Media Pullout, Another Label Joins Anti-Streaming Chorus

Source: HypeBot
August 12, 2011

(UPDATED) Earlier this week, metal and hardcore music group Century Media pulled its labels from Spotify “to protect the interests of their artists." “Spotify in its present shape and form isn't the way forward," according to the company. “Physical sales are dropping drastically in all countries where Spotify is active." Now Brian Brandt of contemporary classical and jazz label Mode Records (Cage, Feldman, Xenakis, others) has joined the anti-Spotify chorus and Spotify is responding to the controversy. “While the major ...

Continue Reading

How Do Users Spend Time Online? A Pew Study [hint: Don't Ditch Your MySpace Page]

Source: HypeBot
August 12, 2011

UPDATED) Cleaning up email lists and updating MySpace pages are still important for musicians and marketers, according to a new Pew study of U.S. internet users which showed that Email and search remain the top two activities. The May 2011 Pew Internet survey found that 92% of online adults use search engines to find information on the Web, including 59% who do so on a typical day. This places search at the top of the list of most popular online ...

Continue Reading

Indies Now Have the Largest Album Marketshare...

Source: Digital Music News
August 11, 2011

Did indie marketshare just multiply—overnight? And, trump every major label in the process? According to A2IM, the answer is definitely yes, thanks to a successful US-based recategorization by Soundscan. “Soundscan finally revamped their analysis by adding marketshare breakdown by label ownership," an A2IM representative told Digital Music News today. “It reveals that independent labels collectively lead the market with 31.2% of album and TEA sales [for the first half of this year]."

'TEA' stands for 'track equivalent albums,' a highly-questionable ...

Continue Reading

Like Music, Like Hollywood? DVD Sales Down 18.3% This Year...

Source: Digital Music News
August 8, 2011

Same shit, different industry? Actually, CDs are taking a break from double-digit plunges, at least for the moment. But this sounds like oh-so-many music industry reports of old, and certainly resembles the bigger picture. According to details just released by the studio-backed Digital Entertainment Group (DEG), DVDs and Blu-ray discs dropped an elephantine 18.3 percent during the first half of this year. Overall, first-halfphysical sales reached $3.9 billion. That is the total for 'packaged goods,' though Blu-rays actually inched upward ...

Continue Reading

Just 8% of Albums Were Sold by Indie Retailers Last Year...

Source: Digital Music News
August 3, 2011

Doesn't that change the debate a little? Despite their impressive cache and importance to real music fans, indie retailers come nowhere near level of tonnage offered by big box retailers, large chains and iTunes. That's according to Nielsen Soundscan, which found that just 8 percent of albums were sold through independent retailers last year, compared to roughly 56 percent from heavyweights like Wal-Mart, Best Buy, and Target. And, 26 percent from iTunes, AmazonMP3, and other onlineoutlets. The rest, about 7 ...

Continue Reading

It's Everywhere: Vinyl Sales Jump 55% in Britain...

Source: Digital Music News
July 31, 2011

This is a cross-Atlantic phenomenon, and now we have more numbers to prove it. According to latest stats from the Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA), sales of vinyl LPs surged 55 percent in the first half of this year, to 168,296 units. Leading the charge was Radiohead, whose King of Limbs shifted 20,771 copies.

But the story gets even more interesting, because the average price of vinyl easily beats CD and digital albums, according to the ERA findings. Specifically, vinyl enjoyed ...

Continue Reading

Study: Global Digital Music Revenues to Almost Triple by 2015

Source: HypeBot
July 29, 2011

Global digital music revenues will more than double from $7.4 billion in 2010 to 20.1 billion by 2015, according to the new Digital Music Market Outlook by Companies And Markets. That's a compound annual growth rate of 22.1% over the period. Subscriptions will be the fastest growing segment, growing at a 60.8% CAGR to 2015. In terms of digital music market value, the US, Japan, UK, France and Germany are the key digital music markets, together accounting for 79.5% of ...

Continue Reading