# Music sales figures in the age of the Internets **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 8, 2009, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/music-sales-figures-in-the-age-of-the-internets/509238 "2009-09-08T02:23:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/96bed5/32.png) [@Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patty_O_Furniture)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2009, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/music-sales-figures-in-the-age-of-the-internets/509238/1 "2009-09-08T02:23:59Z")
Are there any reliable studies showing whether artists are doing better, worse or the same now that a good chunk of music sales has cut out the packaging aspect? I know that many folks still don’t have broadband at home but a decent fraction of the population does, and that should be cutting into the jewel case and shrink wrap industry, resulting in increased profit for the artists. I think we know that it’s more affordable for the consumer now, at 99¢ per song. I can’t remember the last time I bought an actual CD in a brick & mortar store. It has been at least 6 or 8 years since I was at Tower Records shelling out $16.99 for new releases. ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2009, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/music-sales-figures-in-the-age-of-the-internets/509238/2 "2009-09-08T02:40:34Z")
Billboard has been tracking music sales practically forever, so there’s no need for an in-depth. Just compare the biggest selling albums from the 90s with the biggest selling albums from the 2000s: > **[List of Billboard 200 number-one albums](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_number-one_albums_(United_States))** > > This is a list of number-one albums in the United States by year from the main Billboard albums chart, currently called the Billboard 200. > Billboard first began publishing an album chart on March 24, 1945. The chart expanded to 200 positions on the week ending May 13, 1967, and adopted its current name on March 14, 1992. Since May 25, 1991, the Billboard 200 positions have been derived from Nielsen SoundScan sales data, currently contributed by approximately 14,000 music retailers. In Decembe... The drop off in sales is staggering. ---
**Author:** ![Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/96bed5/32.png) [@Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patty_O_Furniture)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2009, 3:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/music-sales-figures-in-the-age-of-the-internets/509238/3 "2009-09-08T03:10:58Z")
There can be many reasons why sales are slumping. What if the biggest selling album this year just wasn’t as good as the biggest selling album from 1995? There might be other factors involved that have nothing to do with the production cost of music sales. Maybe the Baby Boomers are getting older and not buying as much music? I know that’s true of me. ---
**Author:** ![Askance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askance/32/8281_2.png) [@Askance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askance)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2009, 5:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/music-sales-figures-in-the-age-of-the-internets/509238/4 "2009-09-08T05:26:16Z")
The vast majority of individual artists, no. Artists as a whole, probably not. But the music industry as a whole is doing just fine. > **[Digital music sales will almost equal CDs next year](https://www.smh.com.au/business/digital-music-sales-will-almost-equal-cds-next-year-20090819-epdl.html)** > > Compact discs accounted for 65 per cent of US music sales in the first half of 2009 but digital downloads are expected to nearly equal CD sales by the end of next year, market research firm NPD Group said on Tuesday. > [@](#): > > with digital music sales growing at 15 to 20 per cent, and CDs falling by **an equal proportion** , digital music sales will nearly equal CD sales by the end of 2010 > **[Did iTunes Kill the Record Store?](http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/1C726ADF-0ED1-42D0-93D9-4FA4E698E94A.html)** > [@](#): > > A look at the range of retail CD prices helps to establish what really killed the record stores. In an article about the demise of Tower Records, Elaine Misonzhnik observed: > > “Wal-Mart, Target and Virgin Megastores (through the [Amazon.com](http://Amazon.com) website) have been selling the recently released Christina Aguilera CD Back to Basics for $11.88. But Tower Records was selling the same CD for $17.99; F.Y.E. for $14.99; and Amarillo, Texas-based Hastings Entertainment, Inc. for $15.39.” > > Ah-ha! Record stores were trying to turn a profit, and simply starved to death. Dramatically cheaper albums, sold by big box retailers, killed the business model of stores hoping to stay in business selling CDs at list prices. > > How can Wal-Mart and Target afford to sell CDs for a third less than CD stores? Easy: the big box retailers aren’t planning to make money on CDs, but rather offer CDs as loss leaders to generate foot traffic. Music stores were trampled to death under the feet of shoppers running to Wal-Mart. Download stores actually increase sales > [@](#): > > Having destroyed the music store, Wal-Mart has turned its market power to the Internet in hopes of dominating online sales as well. The company teamed up with Microsoft to sell online downloads, and underpriced Apples iTunes Store with 88 cent songs. > > Efforts of the pair of monopolizing giants to take over online sales have been blocked by Apple’s dominant position with the iPod. Microsoft’s DRM doesn’t work on the iPod, cutting Wal-Mart out of the market for the vast majority of potential buyers of online music. > > By forcing third parties to sell their music without DRM in order to work on the iPod, Apple has pushed buyers toward CDs and MP3s stores, and choked sales from rival DRM outlets selling Microsoft PlaysForSure music. > > Last year, **download sales essentially doubled over the year prior across the board** , from current albums in recent release to catalog sales and “deep catalog,” the industry term for older and more obscure albums. > > Sales growth in iTunes was actually stronger in catalog and deep catalog albums than in recent releases, underlining that the iTunes Store is picking up the broader, older album sales that dying record stores are leaving behind after being finished off in their attempts to compete in sales of recently released albums against the big box retail stores offering those same albums at cost. ---
**Author:** ![An\_Gadai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@An\_Gadai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Gadai)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2009, 6:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/music-sales-figures-in-the-age-of-the-internets/509238/5 "2009-09-08T06:37:36Z")
> [@Patty\_O\_Furniture](#): > > There can be many reasons why sales are slumping. What if the biggest selling album this year just wasn’t as good as the biggest selling album from 1995? There might be other factors involved that have nothing to do with the production cost of music sales. Maybe the Baby Boomers are getting older and not buying as much music? I know that’s true of me. The main reason sales have contracted is because people can easily get the music they want for free in a way that they couldn’t during most of the 1990s. ---
**Author:** ![Askance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askance/32/8281_2.png) [@Askance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askance)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2009, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/music-sales-figures-in-the-age-of-the-internets/509238/6 "2009-09-09T03:38:00Z")
I’m not sure how you know that, but in any case one pirated piece of music does not equate to one lost sale. In fact people who download free songs overwhelmingly end up buying more music (I did read this recently but somehow cannot locate the reference any more). Other data: > [@](#): > > legal digital global sales in 2008 grew by an estimated 25% to $3.7 bln in trade value, to account for about 20% of the industry’s global recorded music sales, up from 15% in 2007. however > [@](#): > > Total album sales fell 14% to 428.4 mln units in 2008, according to Nielsen SoundScan. This follows a 15% drop in 2007 ---
**Author:** ![An\_Gadai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@An\_Gadai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Gadai)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2009, 5:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/music-sales-figures-in-the-age-of-the-internets/509238/7 "2009-09-09T05:42:16Z")
> [@Askance](#): > > I’m not sure how you know that, but in any case one pirated piece of music does not equate to one lost sale. In fact people who download free songs overwhelmingly end up buying more music (I did read this recently but somehow cannot locate the reference any more). Other data: > > however “The weight of current evidence strongly supports a view that file-sharing diminishes the revenues of the recording industry. There are two forms of evidence.” - To read further on the topic go to [http://www.utdallas.edu/~liebowit/intprop/main.htm#filesharing](http://www.utdallas.edu/~liebowit/intprop/main.htm#filesharing) where Stan Liebowitz gives a good run through of research into audio filesharing (ie illegal downloading). Your “In fact people who download free songs overwhelmingly end up buying more music” sounds like nonsense to me. Record sales are down because people don’t pay for the music they listen to as often as they used to. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2009, 12:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/music-sales-figures-in-the-age-of-the-internets/509238/8 "2009-09-09T12:24:20Z")
CD sales are clearly down (and the quality of the records/CDs is irrelevant – people always bought records others considered low quality – it’s the total sales drop that’s disturbing). Sales of legal downloads is making up for a portion of the drop, but not enough to reach pre-file-sharing levels. As for the “pirated piece of music equating with one lost sale” argument, it’s attacking a straw man. No one has claimed a one-to-one correspondence. But what is happening is that people are download music without paying. It doesn’t matter if they would have bought all that music or only a fraction of it – it’s lost revenues. As as for the claim that people who download free songs overwhelmingly buy more music, do an experiment. Count the number of songs you’ve downloaded without paying the artist. Then count the number you’ve downloaded and paid for. Which number is bigger? ---
**Author:** ![palindromemordnilap](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/db5fbb/32.png) [@palindromemordnilap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/palindromemordnilap)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2009, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/music-sales-figures-in-the-age-of-the-internets/509238/9 "2009-09-09T14:20:27Z")
I’ve read numerous times that artists rarely make money from album sales. They get an advance which is used to make the record, and the music company gets the profit on the first million or two sold. In past decades even top selling bands often made no money from their first several albums. Musicians make big money on concert tours. Songwriters get royalties when their songs are aired a lot or covered by other artists. Artists get money when their songs appear in movies, TV commercials, etc. They often get a good cut of the profits on merchandise sales. Except for a slice of the royalties, none of this income is affected by file-sharing. In fact, file-sharing exposes new bands to a wider audience that may then go to shows or buy merchandise. It’s music companies that are really damaged by file-sharing. They are also arguably affected by the fact that people can cherry-pick songs they like instead of buying the whole album or just the single. But any statistics that show a drop in album sales should also take into account ringtones, which are very profitable for music companies (and perhaps artists) and reportedly are big business. ---
**Author:** ![Askance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askance/32/8281_2.png) [@Askance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askance)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2009, 6:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/music-sales-figures-in-the-age-of-the-internets/509238/10 "2009-09-10T06:04:10Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > As as for the claim that people who download free songs overwhelmingly buy more music, do an experiment. Count the number of songs you’ve downloaded without paying the artist. Then count the number you’ve downloaded and paid for. Which number is bigger? Well here’s proof that the plural of anecdote !=data. I have never in my life downloaded a single free song, movie, TV show or anything else. I have paid for more than 0 songs off iTunes (I’d say about 6). So my answer to your last question is: the latter. But as I’m one single sample, your question and my answer to it are entirely irrelevant to the larger question. ---
**Author:** ![Askance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askance/32/8281_2.png) [@Askance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askance)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2009, 6:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/music-sales-figures-in-the-age-of-the-internets/509238/11 "2009-09-10T06:13:01Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > As for the “pirated piece of music equating with one lost sale” argument, it’s attacking a straw man. No one has claimed a one-to-one correspondence. Can you support this assertion? The music industry, specifically the RIAA, routinely say “piracy cost the music industry $xxx Billion last year”, and that’s exactly how they calculate it - estimated free downloaded tracks times the average cost per track were it to be bought. They make no allowance whatsoever for the obvious fact that the alternative to many, if not most, pirated downloads is nothing at all, not a sale. The advent of viable download models, such as iTunes, Walmart, and so on shows that there are business models that work and people will pay for. How else do you explain these successes, when there are free, almost risk-free, alternatives available? > [@](#): > > But what is happening is that people are download music without paying. It doesn’t matter if they would have bought all that music or only a fraction of it – it’s lost revenues. Actually that’s precisely what matters. If someone pirates a song, but would not have bought it if it were not “free”, then that’s NOT a lost sale. It’s a failure to make an _extra_ sale, which is a different thing entirely. Piracy matters a lot when it prevents sales that would otherwise have been made, but not much when it does not. The argument is about how much of each of those occurs. ---
**Author:** ![Askance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askance/32/8281_2.png) [@Askance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askance)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2009, 6:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/music-sales-figures-in-the-age-of-the-internets/509238/12 "2009-09-10T06:30:07Z")
> [@Askance](#): > > The music industry, specifically the RIAA, routinely say “piracy cost the music industry $xxx Billion last year”, and\*\* that’s exactly how they calculate it - estimated free downloaded tracks times the average cost per track were it to be bought\*\*. They make no allowance whatsoever for the obvious fact that the alternative to many, if not most, pirated downloads is nothing at all, not a sale. [If a song has been downloaded from a torrent site 17,000 times, it doesn’t necessarily equal 17,000 lost sales, according to US District Judge James P. Jones](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/01/judge-17000-illegal-downloads-dont-equal-17000-lost-sales.ars): > [@](#): > > the RIAA and Lionsgate Entertainment had both submitted requests for restitution— **they had argued that each individual copy of content downloaded through Elite Torrents was the equivalent of a lost sale** ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2009, 6:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/music-sales-figures-in-the-age-of-the-internets/509238/13 "2009-09-11T06:16:35Z")
Besides the piracy argument, a possible factor could also be that any one person’s entertainment budget is not infinitely expansible. Back in the 70s, 80s, even the early 90s, people bought music, books and went to the cinema. That’s about it. But these days, it’s not uncommon to have one or more gaming system, plus games and accessories for it, plus movie and TV series DVDs, one or more cell phones, mp3 player, TiVo, home computer, etc… on top of the music, books and cinema staples. I don’t know about you guys, but I’d rather buy a new game than a new CD any day of the week.