Music sales are down, however is the musicbiz selling it and is Congress helping or hurting?

So the news in Musicbiz for the last couple of day is that compared to last year at this time sales are down. I however look at things another way. Sales are going elsewhere and not until the industry can give consumers something they want the refrain I'm BuyingThis will mean I'm buying something besides music.

So besides the obvious --that not enough good music is in the marketplace, what else is happening?

There is a term in business called capacity restrain* and this is when you have something great however you don't have the fire power to get it out very far if at all. This is where we find ourselves today in the music business. As a distributor I get to sit in on the conversations of many artists bands and labels about project that are coming, in the works, and in the marketplace now.

The number one things they are scrambling for is capitalization.

From the Pressing plants are are now running full time and dealing with the bigger customers first, to the marketing channels that have prices driven up during the 4th quarter economically stopping the independents from even being in the game, our culture is now hi-jacked by Multi-National Entertainment companies that don't export top US artist out of the USA and get us to entertain our own economy to death.

Meanwhile Congress and the Administration do nothing.....From the USMADEMUSIC.org site we can see that there is a bill in Congress that would be a pretty good first step. Well guess what on Oct 14 members of the recording academy will be going to their local Congressional office and demanding a few things and I believe this is another and should be at the top of the list. Supporting US Made Music seems like a no brainer if you are a member of the US Congress. Click to learn more http://usmademusic.org/8-us-music-news/7-lobby-your-local-rep-day-oct-14th

*Factories are getting busier, notably in industries such as auto making and aircraft construction, increasing the incentive to expand operations. Businesses ran at 79.2% of capacity in July, still about a percentage point below the historical average, but at a level that implies some industries are nearing production limits. http://www.kiplinger.com/tool/business/T019-S000-kiplinger-s-economic-outlooks/ PS here the Weekly Music Marketplace sales

CD's are still more than 52% of music album sales at mid point of the year.

So I ask again what industry stops counting or better yet denying the existence of it's largest element when in plain sight the proliferation of it is easily demonstrated and without even looking at the stores listed above. 

"There are how many Starbucks? In the USA there are 11,457  and guess what they all carry music for sales and there aren't any free download cards. How about Public Libraries 120,096 and most of them carry music too.  So there's clearly a problem in what is being posted on blogs verses what is happening in the market place." 

So my example for today comes from a post proclaiming that physical is dead and digital is it... on Stereogum. Granted the gif they have is from another site however up on theirs and no one is questioning it. 

"Everybody knows the music industry has undergone monumental change in the past 30 years. How much change? This handy GIF from Digital Music News" 


However the problem is that physical music specifically CD's is the majority of the music sold ... Some people believe that they are larger since not every store let alone few venues report to Soundscan. 

Now try as I might, I won't stop people from posting that physical specifically the CDs are dead, However with the help of Neilson mid year report we know that 121,000,000 total Album sold w/  54,000,000 being Digital and Vinyl accounting for 4,000,000 or .033 So using math we can deduce that CDs to be 52% of sales and the GIF on the site is just not showing it.

PS as you can see by this weeks sales it's even more.