In a dramatic acceleration of the seven-year sales decline that has battered the music industry, compact-disc sales for the first three months of this year plunged 20% from a year earlier, the latest sign of the seismic shift in the way consumers acquire music.
The sharp slide in sales of CDs, which still account for more than 85% of music sold, has far eclipsed the growth in sales of digital downloads, which were supposed to have been the industry’s salvation.
The slide stems from the confluence of long-simmering factors that are now feeding off each other, including the demise of specialty music retailers like longtime music mecca Tower Records. About 800 music stores, including Tower’s 89 locations, closed in 2006 alone.
Apple Inc.’s sale of around 100 million iPods shows that music remains a powerful force in the lives of consumers. But because of the Internet, those consumers have more ways to obtain music now than they did a decade ago, when walking into a store and buying it was the only option.
Today, popular songs and albums — and countless lesser-known works — can be easily found online, in either legal or pirated forms. While the music industry hopes that those songs will be purchased through legal services like Apple’s iTunes Store, consumers can often listen to them on MySpace pages or download them free from other sources, such as so-called MP3 blogs.
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And it’s going to get worse–for them…
Thats what happens when you hold on to a dying business model. What has really happened with the creation of file sharing is the devaluation of music. The problem is that the music industry has not adapted to this shift by lowering the price of their product cd prices have actually increased. This has alienated most of their consumers since very few are willing to spend 20$ on a CD. Even 99cents a song on Itunes is a little high for most. If the music industry wants to raise sales their gonna have to be creative cut profits from investors and execs and put the focus back on the artist and the music.
I was at Wal-Mart with a friend and there was a small rack with latest CD releases from $10-14. I mean I never look at disks in stores these days and barked that I couldn’t believe it I could buy two of these and that’s my internet bill for a month. The whole scene was like a weird flashback standing in front of that rack..
Music has lost value for me too or rather it has changed value. I didn’t have money to buy every disk I wanted so when I’d get one I’d treasure it it was just me and that disk for a while. Individually albums meant more then.
Now I can sample much more music to find what I like and listen to whole genres and learn so much more about all kinds of music. With downloads there’s no disk box or package to get in the way just the music itself to listen to. I find I don’t miss the package now either.