Nielsen: Digital Music Sales Jumped 14% In First Half Of 2012 Nielsen SoundScan this week announced first-half 2012 digital album sales were up 14% compared to the same time period last year, while digital single sales were up 6%. Overall, music sales were up 6%, though total album sales were down a bit (-0.6%), as sales of physical CDs continues to decline. Overall, CD album sales still accounted for 61% of all album sales in the last six months, down from 66% last year, but still strong enough to dispel rumors of the early demise of the physical format. Digital album and track sales are on course to set new sales records by the end of the year, as digital now represents 57.7% of all music sales, up from 53% in the first half of 2011. "Sales trended well in the first half of the year," Nielsen SVP David Bakula said in a prepared statement. "While retail sales continue to face challenges related to broader market trends, digital sales gains are expected to achieve another record-breaking year." Continuing a recent trend, sales of vinyl albums grew just as fast as digital sales (14%) over the last six months, although the bestselling vinyl album, Jack White's "Blunderbuss," only sold 18,000 units. [Full story: Tech Crunch] |
Catalog Albums Outsold Current Releases For First Time In First Half It's been over 20 years since Nielsen Soundscan started to keep track of U.S. album sales (in 1991), and in that time the recorded music industry has seen revenues drop significantly, digital sales catch up to physical sales, and the switch from an album-oriented consumer to record buyers who once again prefer purchasing singles. But not until last week did they see catalog albums actually outsell new releases. Nielsen sales figures show that in the first six months of 2012, 76.6 million copies of catalog records were sold, compared to 73.9 million current albums. "This is a combination of two things: not having the big blockbuster new releases in the first half, and having very, very strong catalog in the first half," observed Nielsen analyst David Bakula, who explained that these numbers occurred despite the fact that Adele's "21" - still considered a current - has sold a million more copies in 2012 than it had at this point in 2011. Further, Bakula said, one major reason catalog sales have been so strong is that record labels and retailers continue to drop the price of older albums, often to as low as $5.99 or $7.99. Those prices, sometimes half of what they once were, serve to bring in new customers. "I really, truly do believe that there probably is a consumer that is buying music here that wasn't buying music in the past," he noted. So far, the top-selling catalog records of the year include "Guns N' Roses' Greatest Hits" and four records by Whitney Houston. [Full story: Dallas Observer] |
Judge Says Grooveshark's Countersuit Against Universal Can Proceed Music streaming service Grooveshark, which is facing claims from Universal Music Group that it infringed the copyright of hundreds of thousands of songs, is battling back by saying the record label has illegally interfered with its business. UMG last year filed a federal lawsuit accusing Grooveshark's employees - including its chief executive - of illicitly uploading 100,000 songs in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Grooveshark's parent company, Escape Media, now has brought counterclaims that allege UMG interfered with its contracts and illegally exploited its market power by convincing third parties not to business with Grooveshark. Among the claims is that UMG helped induce Apple into pulling its app from the iTunes store, and caused Hewlett Packard to back off of an advertising deal. At issue are songs recorded before 1972, when Congress updated copyright laws to afford federal protection on sound recordings. Until then, songs were covered by state common law copyrights. UMG claimed that Grooveshark violated those copyrights by offering its pre-1972 recordings to its customers, but on Monday (July 9) York judge Barbara Karnick ruled that under the DMCA, it's the copyright holders' job to assert ownership and inform service providers of infringements, and the service provider's task to remove infringements expeditiously. [Full story: Hollywood Reporter] |
Def Leppard Recreates Studio Hits To Bypass "Unfair Digital Rights" As more and more record labels are being sued by their current and former artists, Def Leppard is taking a novel approach to force Universal Music Group to "play fair" with digital distribution of its catalog material. The 1980s-era U.K. rock band has returned to the studio to recreate their recordings and put the tracks up for download - a feat that the band members agree has been much more than a simple re-recording, according to an interview conducted by Billboard with frontman Joe Elliot. "We had to study those songs... down to the umpteenth degree of detail," he said. "It was really hard work, but it was challenging." The band has refused to give UMG permission to distribute its music digitally until it gets what they call a "fair deal," and plans to continue to re-record their songs in no particular order. The band has already released new recordings of "Pour Some Sugar On Me" and "Rock of Ages," which have been downloaded in the U.S. more than 26,000 times combined, according to Billboard. [Full story: Techli] |
EU Drafts Rules To Ease Licensing Rules Across 27 Member Countries The European Union yesterday (July 11) proposed changes to ease licensing rules that prevent Internet music stores, including Apple's iTunes, from selling digital music across the 27 member nations. Under the draft rules, royalty-collection societies could be forced to transfer their revenue-gathering activities to rival organizations if they are found to lack the technical capacity to license music to Internet services in multiple countries. As reported by BusinessWeek, music copyright licenses are granted on a national basis in the EU so consumers can only download music from an iTunes store in their home country. The EU has wanted to promote "pan-European licensing" for many years, and the commission governing music issues in 2008 issued an antitrust decision against national agencies that collect royalties on behalf of artists. Current rules provide European consumers "less access to innovative services," EU Internal Market Commissioner Michel Barnier commented. "It's not surprising that young consumers look elsewhere than the legal" online music stores. The draft rules also will require collection agencies to report quickly to musicians the royalties they've collected. [Full story: Bloomberg BusinessWeek] |
Study: Record Industry Is Evolving From Album To Single Sales Over the past few years many record label executives increasingly have feared that digital downloads would force the music industry to evolve from a business focused on album sales to one driven primarily by singles. Now, based on an analysis conducted by Paid Content, it appears that digital music finally has managed to finish off the album format. Comparing music sales data from both sides of the Atlantic, the company found that album sales are down 3.2% in the United States and 13.8% percent in the United Kingdom when compared with the previous year. Interestingly, this is bad news hidden within some good news, since overall music sales are increasing in 2012 compared with the same period last year. U.S. digital track sales have risen 5.6% when comparing Q2 2012 to Q2 2011, and digital album sales are up 13.7% in the same period. The same is true in the U.K., where the digital album market is showing growth of 15.0% in Q2 and 17.3% for the year-to-date. Still, the drop in sales of physical albums in both countries far outweighs the growth on the digital side. "Album unit sales are down quite significantly year-on-year," British Phonographic Industry chief executive Geoff Taylor said. "It's important to remember that these unit sales figures do not take into account the growing importance of music streaming and subscription services," which may be why the album is ultimately in trouble. [Full story: Digital Trends] |
Rutgers Study: Music Biz Threatened Digital Startups, Innovation A new survey conducted by Associate Professor Michael A. Carrier at Rutgers University School of Law suggests that the destruction of Napster chilled a decade's worth of innovation in the music industry. Through interviews with 31 CEOs, company founders, and key executives who operated in digital music during the period, the study details how the collective recorded music industry thwarted innovation, discouraged investment, and led to a climate of copyright law-fueled fear that pushed technologists and music further apart. Drawing on the experiences of such "digital pioneers" as former Napster CEO Hank Bank, Real Networks founder Rob Glaser, Scour's Craig Grossman, Imeem founder Dalton Caldwell, former Gracenote CEO David Hyman, AudioGalaxy founder Michael Merhej, MP3Tunes founder Michael Robertson, and former RIAA CEO Hilary Rosen, the labels created a "scorched earth kind of place" housing a "graveyard of music companies." According to interviews, the labels collapsed music start-ups, turned down "blank check" deals, and used proceeds from successful litigation to pursue additional lawsuits. As reported by Torrent Freak, one individual was told by the labels that his company would be left alone but he would be sued personally instead, and another was told it was too bad he had children because he would not be able to pay for their college education. One respondent also recounted stories of people in the rap business "being physically intimidated" and "hung out of windows." [Full story: Torrent Freak] |
Al Bell Presents American Soul Music ... And American Soul TV If you're into classic and contemporary Soul, R&B, Blues, Gospel, Jazz, Hip-Hop Soul, Rap Soul, and Neo-Soul, we invite you to listen to Al Bell Presents American Soul Music. Former Stax Records owner and Motown Records Group President Al Bell personally has programmed this awesome radio station online, presenting your favorites from the 1960s and '70s [and some '80s], a lot of the best new music that's being released today, and some real gems you haven't heard in a long, long time. Come to www.AlBellPresents.Com and hear it for yourself! |
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