

But are pirates turning to YouTube and elsewhere









The study also only surveyed those 13 and up.

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By Iaiken on 3/24/2011 1:56:37 PM , Rating: 2
Top selling albums routinely hit 20 million sales in the 80's and 90's. Now they never even come close to that.

This was a bogus comparison before you even got to the second sentence.

On a per year basis, there were between 0-4 albums that would sell over 20 million copies. These albums made up for around 0.005% of the total number of albums each year, but accounted for anywhere up to 20% of the total album sales.

What's more, the sales were of entire albums for ~$20 usually to get 1-3 good songs. Today you can get those three songs for $1-2 each and save yourself the other $14-17. In reality, sales of entire albums have suffered more because discerning buyers will purchase only those songs they want and pan the rest of the album.

This is no longer the case and the chances that an individual artist seizes as much of the market as artists in the past are slim. This is largely because consumers are now faced with a greater and more varied selection to choose from. In the past, people would mostly buy what they heard on the radio and the record companies where the gatekeepers of what ultimately made it on the radio. Today, the gate is gone and people are swamped with choices.

I still budget around $200 a year for music and that's about what I've spent every year since 1995 when I entered high school. Back then, that would get me 8-9 albums with 16-36 songs that I actually wanted to listen to. These days, I get anywhere from 100-200 songs for the same price. None of these are counted towards albums sales despite representing 60-100 different albums.

I'm sorry, but just because consumers have been given greater choice doesn't mean we will make greater sales. Instead, those sales will be made in a more discerning fashion and dispersed across a greater number of albums, artists and ages.

