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Q1 201205
Q1 TOTAL ALBUM SALES WEEK BY WEEK IN LAST 5 YEARS
3.5m 4m
2.5m 3m
1.5m 2m
1m 1 2 3 4 5 6 Week COMPILATION SALES BY REGION Q1 2012 Q1 ARTIST ALBUM SALES WEEK BY WEEK IN LAST 5 YEARS 3m 2.5m 2m 1.5m 1m ARTIST ALBUM SALES BY REGION Q1 2011 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Week
Maverick Sabre as well as returns from the likes of Columbia’s Bruce Springsteen. But the best the schedule could offer – Born To Die – sold just a fifth of what Adele’s 21 did in the first three months of last year. “We are probably seeing three separate
parallels,” is XL Beggars chairman Martin Mills’ assessment of the Q1 market. “One is a less high- profile release schedule, two a shift to streaming and thirdly the continuing move in the pop market from albums to one tracks. The huge distorting factor in the market is at the pop end with people not buying as many albums. That doesn’t apply to the independent sector as much.”
CAUTIOUS CONCLUSIONS
The big rise in digital album sales offers real encouragement to Taylor, but he is cautious about drawing any firm conclusions about the CD market from what occurred in the first quarter. As much as it was down in that period, he suggests at other times in the calendar the story may be different. “We had a pretty resilient Q4 last year [with CD] and it’s not surprising in the softer period of the year, Q1, we had a drop,” he says. However, whether the decrease that happened
in Q1 for the CD will be repeated over the rest of the year or whether it was an exaggeration, what is undeniable is we are witnessing the real decline of a format that has long dominated the physical music market. And different from before with the decline of a physical format, such as cassette, there is no alternative physical format in position to take its place so when we talk about the decline of the CD we are at the same time talking about the decline of the physical recorded music market as a whole. From a retail perspective, the reduction in CD
sales is most concerning with Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA) chairman Paul Quirk pressing home the message if the industry wants
1m 800,000 600,000 400,000 200,000 COMPILATION SALES BY REGION Q1 2011 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Week
“In a sense we have to educate. The choice is not one or the other. Digital is great for music on the move and for devices, but the CD has a value in the car and at home” PAUL QUIRK, ERA
to do something about ensuring the CD has some kind of future it needs to act right now. As such, ERA and the BPI have teamed up to undertake consumer research into the physical market to try to identify where they may be in-store opportunities. Quirk remains a firm advocate of the
CD, but he is keen to stress both CD and downloads continue to have merits in the albums market. “In a sense we have to educate. The choice is
not one or the other,” he says. “Digital is great for music on the move and for devices, but the CD has a value in the car and at home. Let’s not get into it’s one or the other. It’s both and depends what you are doing.” Both formats also played their parts in driving what was a first year-on-year rise in Q1 for
ABOVE Vinyl frontier: sales of the redoubtable format was up in Q1, with Pink Floyd’s The Wall the biggest seller
8 9 10 11 12 13
London 19.8% South 10.5% South West 3.1% Wales & West 8.4% Midlands 14.3% East 8.6% Yorkshire 7.9%
North East 4.0% Lancashire 9.8% Border 1.0% C. Scotland 5.6% N. Scotland 2.3% N. Ireland 2.4%
Q1 COMPILATION ALBUM SALES WEEK BY WEEK IN LAST 5 YEARS 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008
8 9 10 11 12 13
London 20.6% South 10.5% South West 2.9% Wales & West 7.8% Midlands 13.6% East 8.2% Yorkshire 7.8%
North East 4.2% Lancashire 9.9% Border 1.0% C. Scotland 6.0% N. Scotland 2.4% N. Ireland 2.2%
2012 2011 2010 2009 2008
London 18.7% South 10.5% South West 3.2% Wales & West 8.2% Midlands 14.2% East 8.7% Yorkshire 8.1%
North East 4.2% Lancashire 10.0% Border 1.1% C. Scotland 5.5% N. Scotland 2.3% N. Ireland 2.1%
7 8 9 10 11 12 13
2012 2011 2010 2009 2008
ARTIST ALBUM SALES BY REGION Q1 2012
London 20.8% South 10.9% South West 3.0% Wales & West 7.7% Midlands 13.3% East 8.4% Yorkshire 7.4%
North East 3.9% Lancashire 9.2% Border 1.0% C. Scotland 5.6% N. Scotland 2.4% N. Ireland 2.1% Digital 4.2%
compilations since 2007. The market was up 0.4% during 2012’s opening period to 3,941,207 units, a lift that might not sound a lot but it is significant in that it is a rise and compares very favorably to a year ago when there was a 19.3% drop. Leading the charge was Sony’s Sixties female artists
compilation Be My Baby, which sold 193,169 units in the quarter, while EMI TV and UMTV’s Now That’s What I Call Music!
80 also reached six figures, selling another 174,623 copies to take its cumulative total beyond 1.3 million. Also on the rise was vinyl with sales up on the
year by 6.9% to 75,500 units, while that is 42.0% higher than the market was during the opening quarter of 2010. The top seller on the format was EMI’s re-issue of Pink Floyd’s The Wall with more than 1,000 copies sold over the quarter.
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