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Digital Music News has a brief item about the de-emphasis of music at major music retailers like Virgin Megastore and Trans World, which has chopped its music-specific inventory to 43% of its stores’ total offerings to last year’s total of 47%. And when you combine that with the below stats from the in-depth Billboard article on the current state of artist development (sub. req.), which is full of so much good/depressing information that I’ll probably be referencing it all day, the state of the recorded-music-selling business becomes even bleaker than previously thought (although at least it makes the Trans World/Virgin cutbacks seem a little less dire):
Independent stores and regional chains, known for embracing developing artists, are critical in helping labels develop artists market by market, so that eventually baby bands would garner enough sales to convince the big boxes to take a chance.That process was easier in 1991, the year that Billboard began using SoundScan data to determine chart placement. Billboard estimates that, at that time, there were 4,700 traditional chain record stores–at least 10 chains each had 100 stores or more–aggregating to a 47% market share. Some 6,000 independent stores yielded a 15% market share, 8,000 mass-merchant stores took a 23% market share, and the record clubs and mail-order companies had a 15% share.
Today, following mass consolidation, price wars and bankruptcies–most recently underscored by the 2006 closures of Musicland and Tower Records–Billboard very roughly estimates there are about 1,400 traditional chain music stores with about a 6% market share; roughly 1,600 independent stores with a 5% market share; digital stores’ album sales including TEA (track-equivalency albums, or equating every 10 tracks sold by one artist with an album sale) are at a 24% market share; other nontraditional retailers like record clubs, Amazon, Starbucks and concert album sales account for about 8%; some 7,000 mass-merchant stores yielding approximately 31%; and about 2,000 consumer electronic and book stores with about a 26% market share.
Sure, these numbers are very rough, but they’re still staggering; in addition to the collapse of the chain-store backbone, the 71% drop in total chain music stores and a 74% drop in the number of indie stores in 16 years are pretty alarming when you look at the numbers in black and white. (Also, how about the near-total demolition of record clubs? Guess once those “10 albums for a penny” ads went away, so did the parade of suckers lining up to buy half-artworked albums six months after release date.)
Diversification Pushes CD Prospects Southward, Analyst [Digital Music News]
SEEDS OF DOUBT: ARTIST GROWTH [Billboard.biz, sub. req.]
I really think that the movement of music as a physical entity (a CD or LP) to the noncorporeal is great from a convenience standpoint, but has far reaching consequences in terms of the cultural (and economic) value it possesses. A lot of people today don’t see music as something worth buying, but I don’t think they enjoy it any less. The internet has already similarly devalued photography (while more people than ever are into taking pictures!).
If decorporalization has devalued music and photography, well, where has “value” migrated to? What do people value now instead? Or have we come to a point where nothing whatsoever has any value anyway?
Music has always had a tricky relationship to the corporeal anyway — cf. the Platonic eidei, music notation, spirits that reside in sacred instruments, that process that turns grooves in a record or pits on a CD into something that something sensed (processes I’m sure few of us can explain very well anyway) — I’m not convinced the transformation into digital has changed its value much, or is the main culprit behind its devaluation, or isn’t merely the apotheosis of devaluizing trends a century-plus in the making.
Also, how about the near-total demolition of record clubs? Guess once those “10 albums for a penny” ads went away, so did the parade of suckers lining up to buy half-artworked albums six months after release date.
Columbia House and its ilk were another of those things you and I loved that the industry hated (except for Columbia Records and BMG the others who owned stakes in the clubs, of course). Back before there was a digital economy, Billboard’s retail columnist used to rail almost weekly on the “devaluation of music” wrought by those 12-for-a-penny deals.
Basically, the clubs were a ’90s industry bête noire not unlike used CDs. Except it was the retailers who hated the clubs and the labels who hated used-disc sales – so, basically, the two canceled each other out. The devastating thing about digital file trading is that it put a pox on both their houses.
@dickdogfood: Interesting points. I can’t really speak to music’s value pre-20th century, but I would say that the democraticization of choice in the internet era combined with the convenience of music transfer makes music seem less important. As to where the value has gone? Hmmm…I think a lot of attention has been diverted to celebrity culture, fashion, that kind of thing.
I’m kinda just thinking out loud here.
@dickdogfood: If decorporalization has devalued music and photography, well, where has “value” migrated to? What do people value now instead? Or have we come to a point where nothing whatsoever has any value anyway?
It’s gone to other forms of entertainment. There’s so much competing for our dollar – dvds, computers, mp3 players, smartphones/iphones, etc… that’s why labels are trying to get in with these technologies because people value them more than music.
Humanity has always enjoyed distractions, it’s just less tied down to the physical product now as it is tied down to the technology delivering it. (Slight xpost with Brainchild.)
@Lucas Jensen: I’ve argued before on a different chunk of the internets that music no longer has value as a commercial product on its own, but its power is in its value as a branding tool on many levels. For example:
1. Coca-Cola spent a good dime getting Jack White to write a custom jingle. Now, they could’ve chosen people who write jingles for a living, or they could’ve chosen a better selling artist, but there was value in the cultural cache that the Stripes had cultivated.
2. Def Jam has invested a lot of money on Ghostface (his samples are expensive) and The Roots (they spend a looooot of time in the studio) who don’t sell that well. Meanwhile, Jay-Z didn’t give a lot of backing to LL Cool J or Method Man, two artists who could’ve sold big. This could be indication that he cares more about developing the Def Jam brand than winning the album sales war.
3. Despite the 10-year-old joke that M in MTV no longer stands for “music”, it’s still a huge part of the identity. The VMAs are still a big event for them, and they are meticulous about what songs are played on say, The Hills, because it defines who they are and who their audience is.
This isn’t to say that music is no longer a viable commercial product, but albums should be treated as loss leaders that help develop brands, and sales figures should be barometer/focus group, not the scoreboard.
Sorry for the long post. Amy Winehouse, cocaine, dick joke.
@Lucas Jensen:
If I can speak in reallly broad strokes, before the 19C, music is comparatively “rare.” Classical musics of all stripes are largely confined to political elites or religious ceremony; folk musics are intimately tied to the cultures and social circles that birthed them; popular music (as we know it) doesn’t really exist per se; thus most musical cultures require (at best) great effort for an outsider to even hear, much less understand or enjoy.
This all starts to change in the 19C, and really changes with the advent of recorded music, because it allowed — and encouraged — people to experience music faaarr removed from the social contexts for which they were created, the contexts that originally gave the music much of its meaning. Even before the digitalization of music, records and radio allows us to listen to dance music outside of a dance, ring shouts in a mansion, once-in-a-lifetime concerts in the kitchen, Balinese gamelan music in Denver, Wagner’s Ring when- and wherever the hell one wanted, and the St. Matthew Passion in October rather than Easter. I would argue that this decontextualization has dramatically altered music’s importance and cultural specialness; also, we should also not neglect the seeping influence of “ephemeral” music (incidental music, jingles, Muzak, soundtracks, etc.), theoretically created to be consumed on an entirely passive level, and not meant as objects of “aesthetic contemplation” however broadly you might define it.
We didn’t start the fire, in other words.
Sob.
@dickdogfood: Exactly. Blame the industrial revolution, etc.
Also, anyone want to touch the stat that sales are UP at discount retailers and electronics/book chains? However, some of those stores recently announced that they, too, are cutting the floor space dedicated to music (well, Best Buy did, anyway)?
So, anyone know if any of these retailers have like, a contingency plan? A digital music sales model? Or are they just going to throw in the towel too? Because you know, that’ll be the the keening death knell for the sales of actual, physical music product. But hey, don’t tell the people behind THIS IS INDIE!, okay?
Relatedly, where is Starbucks in this? They aren’t a discount chain or a book/electronics store. Hm.
Starbucks is listed as a “nontraditional retailer”, along with Amazon. I imagine QVC and other TV outlets fall into this category as well.
Gotcha. Low blood sugar dissonance/reading incomprehension moment.