Physical music sales where almost 57% of sales last week; Yet still reported as bygone product.

Yet! here we are in the dog days of August and looking at the National Sales report from Nielsen Soundscan that shows of the 3,753,000 units sold 2,150,000 where in physical format for the weekending 08/06.   Now this has happened without and huge releases coming out or a major event like a Jackson Family Tour meanwhile the major of the press in music, was about anything, but physical music.

For anyone thinking that last week was just a blip in the total of digital albums (or equivalent - whatever that really means) sold for the year being 63,205,0000 of the 137,165.000 or 44 percent of your marketplace. Here's the funny part . There's  really one business that can convince all of the new entrants and most of the existing ones to concentrate all of their efforts into the purple part of the pie, aka the smallest part and that's the New Record Business.

Now for those that like profits, it seems the Majors, Sony UNI WEA still concentrate on BOTH and that's why they make billions of dollars and the rest are fighting over pennies almost like being the crustless bread that no one really buys.  Speaking of BuyingThis it was this time last year when the bottom fell out on digital sales and I wonder if this is another signal that same trend will repeat.  Lastly, will this holiday's music catalogs be filled with physical music goodies? I hope so...

  Stupid quotes for the past...

“Keep up the artist awareness and don’t get caught in the common trap of signing both physical and digital distribution deals with the same company.” written by Selenna Nieva, Valleyarm

Why is this Stupid in the Next blog......

PS Come Sept Walmart will be sporting a lot of vinyl.  Read it here first.....

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.

The report of digital and physical demise of music is silly Forbes.

Recently Forbes weighed into the conversation about the state of our business publishing a story from Zack O'Malley Greenburg "Nielsen's Mid-Year Report Reveals Demise Of The Digital Download" in it he makes a couple of bold assertions about the state of the business which as the CEO of an Entertainment company I say ain't really the whole pictures.   The part about Digital download and how they are going to disappear, didn't we just hear that about CD's.  and that streaming is taking over the WORLD, please.

 I can point readers over to an article written by Jon Maples aptly called "The Value of Nothing: Don’t Accept Junk Food Streaming Music Numbers" and he presents some questions for the people that are thinking that streaming is chicken waffles tied to never ending money machine.  Cuz it Ain't. and I agree about that part and here is what I wrote about this subject back in January were I believe more of the tale of Digital is being played out think of it as it ain't your parents ipod anymore kids. 

However,  Jon and Zack and everyone else besides dozen distributors and the Gores Group don't seem to understand MATH.  

Physical is king ((((STILL))))) which any subscriber to Soundscan knows has been the story for the year and this last weeks report is no different with physical sales still being 2384 units of the 4,252 total sold or 56% of the pie.



Now how can something, namely physical sales of prerecorded music, be the majority of sales in it's category! Yet people keep writing it off?

Sure Vinyl is coming back. Considering I backed and released Music That Changes the World  Box set in 2011 and knew and wrote about vinyl back in 2009 when vinyl was .08 percent the pervious year sales those of us that are a VinylDistributor.com can attest yeah it's a great business; However, this number ((((1,015 number rung up from sales at Mass Merchants ))))) -- ain't vinyl --it's CD's and it shows that the big boys are still in the game and to play and win in this game you got to have the right equipment.

Unless they teach something new in Bschool today-- you still have to be where the markets are and for the life of me how 56.1 of it's ain't part of the market is akin to Bush's Voodoo Economics. Heres' a thought how would the US music business fair if writers like Jon and Zack looked at the whole picture ya know, not leaving out the majority of a market. Cuz to me this is either a lack of understanding of the business model or they have an agenda?

As well,  unless I've not gotten "the memo" the fans want music in many different ways and the cost of giving them what they want has never been cheaper;  So, until the bloggers and writers come to terms with the new world where things don't go away (( They maybe niche however on the internetwork nothing goes away since the cassette tape is coming back))  we're not going to see a real connection between the artists, fans and their music until the whole picture is put forth and then the fans can decide how they're BuyingThis.  Not the writers of words or their publishers.

Funny, This reminds me of a Sumerian text by Kabti-ilani-Marduk know as Erra Epos and in it is the saga of the premature advancement of the powers by Marduk (Ram or Aries) over that of Enlil (Bull or Taurus) and the need for proper measuring to ascertain whether the time had indeed come.   Which as it turns out then and now-- it had not.

What to know why Digital Music sales decreased in 2013. Check your kids phones.

According to Nielsen SoundScan.digital track sales fell 5.7% from 1.34 billion units to 1.26 billion units while digital album sales fell 0.1% to 117.6 million units from the previous year’s total of 117.7 million, as reported by Ed Christman in Billboard recent bulletin .

Digital Music Sales Decrease For First Time in 2013

I'll let that sink in for all of your digital only philosophers.  Ed further reported that the vinyl is now
2% of album sales in the U.S; digital albums comprise 40.6% and the CD is 57.2% and cassettes and DVDs 0.2%.

So the Music Biz ain't at 50/50 yet and for anyone that understand MATH physical is 60 percent of the Market.  Yet just about every new label formed since the advent of what ever that company was called thinks way too much about digital only strategy as the future while forgetting about today.  Let's be clear about the strength of CD still.  Next time you're inline at Starbucks or Whole foods, 7-11 or any service station driving down the road. Just look around.  All of them have CD within eye shot of the Cash registers.

Thus solving the riddle of why CD players are still in most Automobiles

I'll also directly respond to Ed's question is streaming taking from Digital Sales. when we look at our statements from #AltaArtists from the various services the streaming payouts are in the 10s of dollars sometimes only cents. Yet the companies are now worth billions?  Yes there is something very wrong here in Digital Denmark.  BTW why wouldn't anyone expect that to be the case.

Think of it this way. If you're not married to the idea that quality is better than rapidly you'll already jumped the sound shark and now it's about getting it NOW.  So you can log in to iTunes, what the pwd? do I have money, is my credit card working? Really I have to use my Mom's account?  Or you can steam it. Often for free, with ads, unless it's bittorrent/etc and no ones the wisers.

Now lets' be clear there was a winner in 2013 and that was the streaming services that yanked the wallet out from under iTunes. So what is the industry going to do about it.   I know at my company we're going to be making a very strong statement in 2014 about the Future of Entertainment Today and I hope that others are going to start to take a Clicks to Bricks Distribution Strategy in 2014.

BTW these same kids streaming are the ones buying Vinyl, Cassettes and yes CD's.  They're a fickle bunch and since they don't understand themselves it's gonna be harder to for us to understand them. However the one thing that remains supreme is Entertainment needs to cater to the AltaFans and they want it Digital and Physical.