www.musicweek.com
20.04.12 MusicWeek 13
RIGHTS FOR COMPILATIONS Where the increase in compilation sales this past
quarter was really felt was at the top end of the market with collective unit sales of Q1’s 10 biggest various artist packages 44.2% higher than what Q1 2011’s equivalent sellers sold. They were led by Sony’s Be My Baby, a three-disc set of tracks by female groups and solo acts from the 1960s, which sold an impressive 193,169 copies by the end of the quarter. This was 29.0% higher than Now! 77 sold a year ago to be the first period of 2011’s top seller. Number two on Q1 2012’s list is Now! 80, which sold 174,623 units during the three months, compared to just 77,093 sales for Rhino’s Brit Awards 2011 to occupy the same position on the quarter-end chart at the beginning of last year, while Ministry of Sound’s Addicted To Bass 2012 was the 10th top compilation in the quarter just gone with 62,522 sales, 48.0% more than the 10th top seller shifted in Q1 2011. The further you go down the top sellers list the
smaller the year-on-year percentage increase is, a trend which seems to reflect what Pritchard notes is EMI and its rivals narrowing down what now enters the market. “There are fewer compilations. They are more carefully prepared and thought through,” he says. “There are more joint ventures; rather than everyone competing with one another [with the same concept] we’re going for combined strength and making sure the track listing is perfect, which is partly driven by retail as they aren’t prepared to take as many compilations as they used to.” “For us the compilations that are out there are
big targeted brands and are well-thought-out compilations and better for the buyers,” adds Ministry of Sound marketing director Alice Schofield whose company’s big Q1 successes included XX – Twenty Years and Running Trax Gold. “There are also fewer artist releases, which helps.” Where the compilations sector has found it
particularly tough on the high street is within the supermarkets. Some of the players’ reduction in shelving space for music has been felt across the industry, but compilations in particular have suffered as once upon a time they would have been racked as a separate chart. Now they increasingly have to compete in a single chart rack alongside
2m 4m 6m 8m 10m
0 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
200,000 400,000 600,000 800,000 1m Q1 DIGITAL COMPILATIONS SALES
2010 509,580
2007 60,173
0
100,000 200,000 300,000 400,000 500,000
0 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
artist titles, meaning only the biggest titles get a look-in. In contrast to this, the digital market is
becoming more important to the sector and has proven to be one of the main drivers of the year-on- year sales increase. Until now the compilations business has been much slower winning converts from physical to digital compared to artist albums with just 10.5% of its unit sales in Q1 2010 accounted for by downloads. However, this grew to 15.3% during the same period a year later and increased again to 24.7% in the last quarter. Some individual titles commanded significantly bigger download shares, including the joint EMI and Universal release Now That’s What I Call Running,
Q1 SALES OF TOP-SELLING COMPILATIONS
2003 8 Mile 2004 Love Actually 2005 Now! 60 2006 Clubbers Guide 06 2007 R1’s Live Lounge 2008 Now! 69 2009 Motown 50 2010 Now! 75 2011 Now! 77 2012 Be My Baby
ABOVE Q1 performers: From top – Be My Baby, XX Twenty Years and the two running titles, Running Trax Gold and Now That’s What I Call Running
2008 143,307
2009 278,145
2012 973,105
Source: Official Charts Company (all graphs) Q1 COMPILATIONS SALES
which achieved 46.6% of its Q1 sales digitally. This compares to just 10.8% for the regular series’ Now! 80 since its release last November, while 13.3% of the first-week sales of the April 2-issued Now! 81 were digital. “Digital is now a greater part of the mix, which
is helping,” says Universal commercial division managing director Brian Rose. “Physical was down 10% [in quarter one], but nothing like to the degree of artist albums, and we’re seeing perhaps a bottoming out of the physical decline.” “Digital is catching up,” adds EMI’s Pritchard
2011 602,504
who notes the Running album has been particularly targeted at the download market, so helping to increase its download sales. He also reckons there is evidence compilations are incrementally encouraging one-track download sales as consumers use them on the likes of iTunes as “browsers” to check out specific tracks they might want to buy individually. However, he adds this trend “doesn’t undermine
something like Now! because enough people want to buy the bundle”. “It’s maybe impacting on dance compilations as people look at them and see they only want a few tracks,” he says. Sony CMG marketing director Phil Savill
suggests the increase in digital compilation sales also reflects the widening profile of people now downloading. He says: “iTunes initially was probably more of a
musos destination where people bought artist albums rather than late adopters who tend to buy compilations and as iTunes and the iPod have become more widespread it’s ended up with the iTunes Top 100 mirroring more of a supermarket chart with artist albums and compilations.” So far so good then this year for compilations
and the coming months are likely to present the sector with plenty more opportunities with themed albums around the likes of the Diamond Jubilee and Olympics. When you then add in what appears to be a
growing number of successful compilation brands that can be revisited again and again, with Be My Baby just the latest, there is every chance the year- on-year growth experienced in Q1 can continue throughout 2012.
SONY TURNED TO THE MAN behind the compilation of every Now! album to put together what became the sector’s biggest release of Q1. Ashley Abram’s work on Be My Baby
THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN TOUCH ABRAM’S SUCCESS COULD LEAD TO BABY NO.2 “It’s quite easy to put together
extended a relationship with the major, which last year led to the creation of Sugar Sugar, a triple-disc set of Sixties and early Seventies bubble gum pop classics. It sold around 130,000 copies last year and was 2011’s 14th biggest compilation. Also over three discs, the female artists’
themed Be My Baby was exclusively dedicated to tracks from the 1960s, one of the most over-mined periods for
a couple of discs of Sixties female music. The trick Ashley’s managed to pull off is he’s mixed some of the well-known stuff and classics with tracks you haven’t seen for a long while [such as The Flirtations, pictured left], which makes it interesting,” says Sony CMG marketing director Phil Savill.
compilations, but managed to stand out from the crowd by having a tracklisting that mixed the obvious with lesser-known tracks and some that rarely, if ever, turn up on such albums.
“We’re really pleased with the way it has
performed,” he adds. “It’s one of those ones that tick all the right boxes. The compilations world is a tricky old world and it’s not easy to work out what is going to
work and what won’t work. You need to have everything exactly right: the concept, artwork, tracklisting, price and timing. You need to get all five or six lined up and you’re in with a chance and Be My Baby has managed to do that.” The success of Be My Baby also means
Sony potentially has what every compilations company craves: a concept that is ripe for sequel after sequel. Now! is clearly the most successful of these with a history dating back to 1983, while more recent ones include Universal’s late Fifties/early Sixties themed Dreamboats & Petticoats and Sony’s American Anthems, which Savill says is set for a third instalment later this year.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52