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Post by areyoureadytojump on Jul 16, 2014 10:10:19 GMT -5
7/26 Billboard charts: www.billboard.com/articles/columns/chart-beat/6157709/sia-1000-forms-of-fear-billboard-200-soundscan-chandelierThe week's 4.1 million haul is the smallest weekly sum for album sales since SoundScan began tracking data in 1991. Weekly album sales volume has been below 5 million for the past 12 consecutive weeks. The 5 million mark has only been surpassed in five weeks this year. To compare, a year ago at this point, there were 21 weeks where sales exceeded 5 million. Weekly volume didn't fall below 5 million in the SoundScan era until 2010, when, in the week ending May 30, album sales dropped to 4.9 million.
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onebuffalo
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Post by onebuffalo on Jul 16, 2014 10:42:47 GMT -5
Four million sales in a nation of 310 million (2010 census figures). That means only 1.3% of the population bought albums. Sad!
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HolidayGuy
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Post by HolidayGuy on Jul 16, 2014 10:56:53 GMT -5
And that's not considering people buying multiple albums themselves.
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Post by areyoureadytojump on Jul 19, 2014 9:45:53 GMT -5
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Kishi KCM
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Post by Kishi KCM on Jul 19, 2014 9:54:54 GMT -5
Four million sales in a nation of 310 million (2010 census figures). That means only 1.3% of the population bought albums. Sad! Unfortunately, most people do not buy music. They are streaming or bootlegging. Your average casual music listener won't pay money for something they can access free of charge.
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Post by areyoureadytojump on Aug 27, 2014 11:25:13 GMT -5
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Post by areyoureadytojump on Aug 28, 2014 9:39:35 GMT -5
www.billboard.com/articles/business/6236365/album-sales-hit-a-new-low-2014?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=biz_breakingnews&utm_campaign=Breaking%20News Album Sales Hit A New LowBy Ed Christman and Glenn Peoples | August 28, 2014 8:59 AM EDT The market for albums continues to recede, following a (now) long-standing trend that has been accelerated by streaming's success. As streaming gathers momentum, the U.S. music industry keeps breaking sales milestones -- the wrong kind. This week's 3.97-million album sales tally is the smallest weekly sum for album sales since Nielsen SoundScan began tracking data in 1991. It's also the first time weekly sales have fallen below four million in that time span. Last week was fairly slow for the top releases. The top album, Wiz Khalifa's Blacc Hollywood, debuted with sales of 90,000 units, a figure below the first-week sales of many other top debuts of 2014. Three other albums debuted inside the top 10 but averaged only 31,000 units apiece. And the Frozen soundtrack is no longer moving in excess of 100,000 units per week. To compare, a year ago this past week (ending Aug. 25, 2013), 4.88 million albums were sold. But sales have been losing steam all year. The weekly average number of album sales fell from 4.75 million units in the first quarter to 4.55 million units in the second quarter. In the first 8 weeks of the third quarter, the average has fallen further to 4.2 million. This decline is actually in line with historical trends. In 2013, average weekly album sales experienced a similar fate, falling from 5.7 million units in the first quarter to 5.23 million units in the second quarter and then 4.86 million units in the third quarter. This year, overall U.S. album sales are down 14.6 percent, while digital album sales are down 11.7 percent and track sales are down 12.8 percent. As more and more consumers transition from purchasing music to streaming tunes, it's natural to see album sales shrink. This year, there have only been five weeks where album sales were above 5 million. Larger retailers and CDs, vestiges of an older record business, have been hit the hardest. Through August 24th, CD sales are down 19.2 percent year-over-year while sales at mass merchants and chains have fallen 23 percent and 25.6 percent, respectively. Record label sales executives are not surprised by the latest downturn. "Sales have been going in the wrong direction all year," says one label sales head. "I guess its overdue, when you look at [the growth of streaming]." This year, label executives finally conceded something there were reluctant to acknowledge last year: Streaming is cannibalizing digital sales. Last year, when Billboard covered the then-historic lows in album sales last August, weekly sales had dipped below 5 million units for five weeks in a row. Weekly sales fared even worse in the following weeks, falling under five million units in 10 of the next 13 weeks. There was even another five-week run of below-five-million weekly sales from early October to early November. The five-million-unit mark has been almost unreachable in 2014. So far this year, weekly album sales have fallen below that threshold in 29 of 34 weeks and in each of the last 18 weeks. No weekly sales tally has exceeded 4.5 million units since the middle of June. "What can I say about this week's sales," says yet another distribution sales executive. "I remember when album sales fell under 10 million units and the industry reacted like it was a tragedy." There is yet more bad news about the sales trend. Since album sales began to slide in 2002, the lowest-placed weekly sales floor by the end of the year tends to become the new ceiling for sales in the following year. Past history teaches us that, if weekly sales continue to fall below the three million mark, next year's norm will be in the three to four million range. While some major label executives claim that revenue from streaming, which continues to grow, is offsetting declining digital sales revenue, not everyone agrees with that assessment. "This year the bottom fell out of digital sales to a degree that we never anticipated, which is why many companies are not meeting this year's revenue projections," laments one indie distribution executive. Additional reporting by Keith Caulfield
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Flip
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Post by Flip on Aug 28, 2014 10:07:08 GMT -5
Sales are getting lower and lower. This will continue in the future. Audio streaming services are getting more popular, and this is the result.
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WolfSpear
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Post by WolfSpear on Aug 28, 2014 10:21:44 GMT -5
I hate to say this but... Eventually, the Billboard 200 is going to become irrelevant. Sure, it fulfills its mission statement by measuring the best selling albums, but that's not the point. You can't have a number one album selling 20k in a week and pretend that its a glorious week for that artist. The same goes for artists who make the top 10 with only 8k... This will happen down the line.
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YourFaveIsAFlop
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Post by YourFaveIsAFlop on Aug 28, 2014 12:44:42 GMT -5
Sales aren't down any more this year than they have been previously. To act like this is a sudden bottom falling out of the market is disingenuous. They've been headed this direction for a long time, there's nothing shocking about it. I think the most likely thing that's going to start happening is the labels holding back the singles for an album from streaming services until the album is released, and then holding the album off the streaming services until a certain period of time has passed. I think pop artists are going to be moving more in the digital EP direction vice full albums.
And about the BB200 becoming irrelevant, outside of the Top 50 it basically is already. Nothing below 100 sells in any quantity meaningful enough to even keep track of
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CookyMonzta
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Post by CookyMonzta on Aug 29, 2014 16:27:54 GMT -5
I hate to say this but... Eventually, the Billboard 200 is going to become irrelevant. Sure, it fulfills its mission statement by measuring the best selling albums, but that's not the point. You can't have a number one album selling 20k in a week and pretend that its a glorious week for that artist. The same goes for artists who make the top 10 with only 8k... This will happen down the line.Exactly the point I was trying to make about a month ago. Though it may have been pre-SoundScan (and maybe not too long afterwards), there was a time, a little over 2 decades ago, when any top-10 album was all-but-certain to go platinum, top-5, maybe double-platinum, and number 1, maybe triple-platinum if it has staying power. That actually meant something. We are now at an age when, although people still like to pretend that hitting number 1 is something spectacular, a number 1 album today could end up flopping, even by today's standards. I would not be surprised if, within the next 2 years (maybe 3 years max), we have an album debut at number 1 with only 20,000 copies, maybe 25,000, and fail to sell 100,000 by the time it is close to maxing out on sales. Should that warrant a revision of the standards for gold and platinum? ABSOLUTELY NOT! In a nation of 316 million people, if an album cannot sell 500,000 copies, it does not deserve gold, especially when Adele still managed to go diamond.
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Post by Devil Marlena Nylund on Aug 29, 2014 16:32:11 GMT -5
It's all relative though. As long as releasing albums is the norm for most/all artists, the Billboard 200 will be a relatively useful measurement of album performance. It'll only be when artists start doing streaming-exclusives or bypassing albums altogether that the album chart will start to lose its relevance.
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CookyMonzta
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Post by CookyMonzta on Aug 29, 2014 16:33:08 GMT -5
And about the BB200 becoming irrelevant, outside of the Top 50 it basically is already. Nothing below 100 sells in any quantity meaningful enough to even keep track of Given another 3 or 4 years (and quite frankly, I'd put horse money on 2 years), anything between number 21 and number 50 will become just as irrelevant.
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pnobelysk
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Post by pnobelysk on Aug 29, 2014 22:42:00 GMT -5
I hate to say this but... Eventually, the Billboard 200 is going to become irrelevant. Sure, it fulfills its mission statement by measuring the best selling albums, but that's not the point. You can't have a number one album selling 20k in a week and pretend that its a glorious week for that artist. The same goes for artists who make the top 10 with only 8k... This will happen down the line.Exactly the point I was trying to make about a month ago. Though it may have been pre-SoundScan (and maybe not too long afterwards), there was a time, a little over 2 decades ago, when any top-10 album was all-but-certain to go platinum, top-5, maybe double-platinum, and number 1, maybe triple-platinum if it has staying power. That actually meant something. We are now at an age when, although people still like to pretend that hitting number 1 is something spectacular, a number 1 album today could end up flopping, even by today's standards. I would not be surprised if, within the next 2 years (maybe 3 years max), we have an album debut at number 1 with only 20,000 copies, maybe 25,000, and fail to sell 100,000 by the time it is close to maxing out on sales. Should that warrant a revision of the standards for gold and platinum? ABSOLUTELY NOT! In a nation of 316 million people, if an album cannot sell 500,000 copies, it does not deserve gold, especially when Adele still managed to go diamond. This is why I think they should have a silver certification here . Albums don't sell well anymore . Why not make 250k a minor accomplishment
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CookyMonzta
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Post by CookyMonzta on Aug 30, 2014 0:18:26 GMT -5
This is why I think they should have a silver certification here . Albums don't sell well anymore . Why not make 250k a minor accomplishment DINGDINGDINGDINGDINGDINGDINGDING!!! A little over 20 years ago, I suggested to Geoff Mayfield of Billboard that there should be a diamond certification for 10 million sales. With the U.K. awarding silver, maybe I should have suggested the same thing for the U.S. But then again, back in 1994 gold wasn't that hard to achieve, as the top 200 albums of the year were all gold... ...Then again, a trainload of indies with little backing from the mainstream still managed to sell 250,000, and surely deserved such an award for their efforts. If it were up to me, I'd make silver retroactive to the day they launched SoundScan, and even then I'd make it retroactive for every album known to have sold that many copies before the introduction of SoundScan. That number could be absolutely enormous.
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Wolfy
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Post by Wolfy on Aug 30, 2014 0:29:46 GMT -5
Sales are getting lower and lower. This will continue in the future. Audio streaming services are getting more popular, and this is the result. Video streaming also. VEVO has huge daily numbers. The streaming powerhouses are making a lot off streaming. Rihanna, Katy Perry & Shakira all have huge streaming numbers on VEVO. I wonder if VEVO pays more than Spotify? On VEVO you have to watch a commercial before the video. That likely pays more than just streaming a song on Spotify. As sales continue to drop, streaming charts will become more important than album sales charts. Just this year, Shakira already has over 1B in VEVO views. She'll likely bring in 2B views in 2014. That's a lot of commercials that are being viewed on VEVO before her music videos.
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mluv
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Post by mluv on Aug 30, 2014 0:41:09 GMT -5
The industry is partly to blame for the extreme drop in album sales as they've chosen to put all their big sellers in the last quarter of 2014. Streaming is also definitely cannibalizing sales. People are now used to not paying for music which will probably lead to a less people pursuing music as a full time career. Artists are probably going to start looking at other ways to make money making deals with corporate advertisers and selling their music for movies and TV.
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Wolfy
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Post by Wolfy on Aug 30, 2014 0:50:51 GMT -5
The industry is partly to blame for the extreme drop in album sales as they've chosen to put all their big sellers in the last quarter of 2014. Streaming is also definitely cannibalizing sales. People are now used to not paying for music which will probably lead to a less people pursuing music as a full time career. Artists are probably going to start looking at other ways to make money making deals with corporate advertisers and selling their music for movies and TV. The big divas are already doing that. Shakira sold all her singles this era to her sponsors. She had deals with Crest, Activia, Tmobile and Starbucks. Her song "Dare" was also featured on a commercial for a TV show on ABC and it was used during the world cup. With close to record setting streaming numbers on VEVO, and all her sponsors, she made plenty of money off her music this era, even though her album didn't sell well and her single didn't do well on the radio. "Shakira" the brand also made money off The Voice and her perfumes. JLo is doing almost exactly the same thing. Her music appears on tons of commercials, her videos get big streaming numbers, her products sell well, and she gets a big paycheck from idol. The big divas are finding other ways to make money off their music. The big divas don't care about album sales. They release music to sell their brand and to tour.
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Post by areyoureadytojump on Aug 30, 2014 7:19:02 GMT -5
Exactly the point I was trying to make about a month ago. Though it may have been pre-SoundScan (and maybe not too long afterwards), there was a time, a little over 2 decades ago, when any top-10 album was all-but-certain to go platinum, top-5, maybe double-platinum, and number 1, maybe triple-platinum if it has staying power. That actually meant something. We are now at an age when, although people still like to pretend that hitting number 1 is something spectacular, a number 1 album today could end up flopping, even by today's standards. I would not be surprised if, within the next 2 years (maybe 3 years max), we have an album debut at number 1 with only 20,000 copies, maybe 25,000, and fail to sell 100,000 by the time it is close to maxing out on sales. Should that warrant a revision of the standards for gold and platinum? ABSOLUTELY NOT! In a nation of 316 million people, if an album cannot sell 500,000 copies, it does not deserve gold, especially when Adele still managed to go diamond. This is why I think they should have a silver certification here . Albums don't sell well anymore . Why not make 250k a minor accomplishment I doubt this going to happen. Labels won't pay for a Gold certification! Albums by Usher, Bruce Springsteen, AWOLnation, Fall Out Boy, Great Gatsby Sdtk, Cris Brown, Fantasia, Wale, Eddie Vedder, Miguel, Prince, Rpbin Thicke, Lady GaGa, Michael Buble, Katy Perry, Drake, Jill Scott, Shinedown, Seal, Skrillex, Jazmine Sullivan, Christine Perri and Shakira have not been certified Gold. If they won't write a check for a Gold cert (Which costs $350), why would they want to pay a for Silver cert?
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HolidayGuy
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Post by HolidayGuy on Aug 30, 2014 7:35:31 GMT -5
Sooner or later, with how sales are going, I could see it becoming The Billboard 100, even though the singles chart is the Hot 100. May as well have even more synergy.
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Agent Yoncé
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Post by Agent Yoncé on Aug 30, 2014 13:45:08 GMT -5
This is doing nothing but encouraging singles success & free music. Eventually buying an album will be a dead art.
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Enigma.
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Post by Enigma. on Aug 31, 2014 11:46:55 GMT -5
Obviously Billboard will include streaming to album chart too. It already is part of album chart here in Nordic countries.
Album chart will never be irrelevant.
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Post by cause_for_celebration on Aug 31, 2014 13:55:57 GMT -5
Obviously Billboard will include streaming to album chart too. It already is part of album chart here in Nordic countries. Album chart will never be irrelevant. Id like to know how Billboard would include streaming into the album chart. Would a stream for a song count towards the song's ranking on the Hot 100 AND the ranking of its parent album on the Billboard 200? I'm curious how they would do it.
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Enigma.
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Post by Enigma. on Sept 1, 2014 14:09:01 GMT -5
Here it's done this way I believe: one must listen to at least six songs from the album and albums that have less tracks don't count. The number of streams is divided by the number of tracks on the album. If you listen to 7/10 tracks on one album, the album gets 0.7 streaming points and then that number is adjusted to sales by sales ratio. So if you listen to the album once it doesn't equal a bought copy. It's a bit complicated system baby steps baby steps...
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grandelf
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Post by grandelf on Sept 1, 2014 14:24:41 GMT -5
Obviously Billboard will include streaming to album chart too. It already is part of album chart here in Nordic countries. Album chart will never be irrelevant. Well I'd imagine outside the major markets album sales are so low anyway that they went with it. But I don't see the Billboard 200 adding streaming, maybe a separate new chart that combines both sales and streaming, I just don't think streaming albums would make that much of a difference, it's one thing to stream one hit single but a 50-70 minute long album? Not likely, people seem to forget that album sales exploded and peaked because the consumers were forced to buy albums for the hits instead of singles due to labels not issuing them, and not because of the "quality" of albums. Nowadays there is iTunes and streaming for the hits so albums are getting more irrelevant by the day. In the UK just 1000 copies to hit the Top 75, in the US even big names failing to scan a million in a calendar year etc, I'd say we are definitely in the "irrelevant" times already. Us, music fans cannot imagine the industry without regular albums but we are definitely a small minority now...
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Enigma.
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Post by Enigma. on Sept 1, 2014 14:26:45 GMT -5
Hmmm I believe people want to listen to albums they are interested in for example on Spotify.
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Post by cause_for_celebration on Sept 1, 2014 15:28:10 GMT -5
Here it's done this way I believe: one must listen to at least six songs from the album and albums that have less tracks don't count. The number of streams is divided by the number of tracks on the album. If you listen to 7/10 tracks on one album, the album gets 0.7 streaming points and then that number is adjusted to sales by sales ratio. So if you listen to the album once it doesn't equal a bought copy. It's a bit complicated system baby steps baby steps... That's interesting. It would be interesting if Spotify ranked top album streams, with one user listening to 6 individual tracks from an album counting as one album stream.
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Green Baron
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Post by Green Baron on Sept 1, 2014 15:29:35 GMT -5
I bought a vinyl yesterday.
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mluv
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Post by mluv on Sept 1, 2014 18:03:02 GMT -5
Here it's done this way I believe: one must listen to at least six songs from the album and albums that have less tracks don't count. The number of streams is divided by the number of tracks on the album. If you listen to 7/10 tracks on one album, the album gets 0.7 streaming points and then that number is adjusted to sales by sales ratio. So if you listen to the album once it doesn't equal a bought copy. It's a bit complicated system baby steps baby steps... That's interesting. It would be interesting if Spotify ranked top album streams, with one user listening to 6 individual tracks from an album counting as one album stream. I think Spotify does track album streams but I'm not sure what methods they use. If you click on top lists when you're in Spotify, you get the top 100 tracks and the top 100 albums. Right now their top 10 albums listed are the latest albums for artists: 1. Ariana Grande 2. 5 Seconds of Summer 3. Ed Sheeran, 4. Drake 5. Sam Smith 6.Iggy Azaelea 7. Jason Derulo 8. Katy Perry 9. Wiz Khalifa 10. One Republic
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asg4
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Post by asg4 on Sept 1, 2014 19:10:46 GMT -5
Sales are getting lower and lower. This will continue in the future. Audio streaming services are getting more popular, and this is the result. Video streaming also. VEVO has huge daily numbers. The streaming powerhouses are making a lot off streaming. Rihanna, Katy Perry & Shakira all have huge streaming numbers on VEVO. I wonder if VEVO pays more than Spotify? On VEVO you have to watch a commercial before the video. That likely pays more than just streaming a song on Spotify. As sales continue to drop, streaming charts will become more important than album sales charts. Just this year, Shakira already has over 1B in VEVO views. She'll likely bring in 2B views in 2014. That's a lot of commercials that are being viewed on VEVO before her music videos. VEVO is jointly owned by youtube and the major record companies I think its a 50-50 partnership.
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