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13.07.12MusicWeek 13


With few titles on the artist side of substance


entering the market, it was left to the latest Now! compilation – Now! 81 - to claim the highest number of sales.There was nothing particularly unusual in that as the brand often tops the quarter- end combined albums chart, but the manner of its victory on this occasion spoke volumes about just how frail the artist albums sector was.The EMI/Universal title had 641,783 takers by the end of the quarter, incredibly outselling the biggest three artist albums combined. The Now! album’s success powered another


encouraging set of figures for the compilations sector following a 0.4% year-on-year growth in Q1, its first rise in five years.This grew to 3.3% in the next three months,while at 2012’s mid-way point the various artists sector is 1.9% ahead of where it was at the same point last year.The figures may indicate the rise in Q1 was no fluke but the start of a turnaround after years of decline. The BPI’sTaylor believes the state of the


economy and the growth of digital compilation sales are the two main factors behind this rise. “In times like this people are looking for value


for money and trusted brands.Now! is such a trusted brand and you know what you get with a Now! album,”he says. “People are also looking for value and [with some releases] sometimes you get 60 or more tracks for less than £10. Secondly, digital compilations are really starting to take off:more than a quarter of compilation sales were digital and for some best sellers it was higher.” Sadly, the artist albums market can only look to


its sister sector with admiration and envy because it is now suffering the kind of percentage falls the compilations business long had to endure. Sales fell by another 16.2% in Q2 as the overall albums business dropped by 12.7%,meaning nearly 3 million fewer units were sold over the three months compared to the same period last year. More positively, the decline in total album sales


slowed in Q2, having been down by 14.7% between January andMarch, but this improvement is largely about Adele and the slightly easier job the quarter just gone had competing with her incredible 2011 numbers than Q1 did.This is because 21 sold far more copies in the first three months of last year than the second. Removing Adele’s sales completely from the


year-on-year comparisons naturally makes the stats look better for 2012, but only marginally.By excluding her releases from the calculations the artist album sector was 11.7% down in Q2, rather than 16.2%, and the overall market 8.9% smaller,


YEAR TO DATE 2012 Source: Official Charts Company


SALES PERIOD 2012 2011


TREND % CHANGE


Q2 2012 Q2 2011


TREND % CHANGE


SINGLES


93,583,966 88,013,637


+6.3% CD ALBUMS


28,627,616 37,748,431


–24.2%


TOTAL ALBUMS 43,570,179


50,516,440 –13.8%


ARTIST ALBUMS 34,180,452


41,023,730 –16.7%


DIGITAL ALBUMS 14,750,935 12,570,862


+17.3%


COMPILATIONS 7,975,280


7,830,355 +1.9%


VINYL ALBUMS 174,772 170,865


+2.3%


‘UNMATCHED’ 1,414,447


1,662,355 N/A OTHER


16,855 26,282


–35.9%


TOP 10 ARTIST ALBUMS Q2 2012 POS


1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9


ARTIST/ TITLE / LABEL ADELE 21 XL


EMELI SANDE Our Version Of Events Virgin


GARY BARLOW/COMMONWEALTH BAND Sing Decca ED SHEERAN+Asylum


NICKI MINAJ Pink Friday Roman Reloaded CashMoney/Island LANA DEL REY Born To Die Polydor JESSIE JWho You Are Island/Lava COLDPLAYMylo Xyloto Parlophone KEANE Strangeland Island


10 RIHANNA Talk That Talk Def Jam


TOP 10 COMPILATIONS Q2 2012 POS


TITLE / LABEL


1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9


Source: Official Charts Company


sales of the 10th biggest seller in this period each year shows the market declined far faster among the top titles than the market as a whole. Rihanna’s Def Jam/Mercury-issuedTalkThat


Talk sold 104,107 copies to finish as the 10th most popular artist seller between April and June this year, 21.7% less thanMercury act Chase & Idols needed to attain the same position with NoMore Idols 12 months earlier. By comparison, sales of Q2 2012’s 100th top


Source: Official Charts Company


NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL MUSIC! 81 EMI TV/UMTV KEEP CALM AND RELAX Rhino/SonyMusic


NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL RUNNING EMI TV/UMTV ULTIMATE CLUBLAND AATW/UMTV


BACK TO THE OLD SKOOL GARAGE CLASSICS MoS 90S GROOVE Ministry of Sound/Sony DANCE PARTY 2012 SonyMusic/UMTV


DREAMBOATS & PETTICOATS - THREE STEPS EMI TV/UMTV R&B IN THE MIX 2012 AATW/UMTV


10 MASH UP MIX BASS 2012 Ministry of Sound


instead of 12.7%. However,Entertainment Retailers Association


chairman Paul Quirk suggests the Adele effect last year was even greater than that as some consumers who went into a store or online to buy one of her albums ended up purchasing other releases as well. But the fact 21 sat yet again at the top of a


quarterly artist albums chart – the fifth time it has done so in the past six quarters – clearly showed just how fragile the rest of the market was.That weakness appears to have been most strongly felt right at the top end with the quarter’s 10 biggest artist sellers having collectively sold 33.7% fewer units than the equivalentTop 10 managed during the second period of 2011. EMIMusic UK CEO Andria Vidler,whose


company’s Emeli Sandé debut Our Version Of Events was the quarter’s second-biggest artist album, suggests: “It’s difficult to compare with last year because we had the Adele phenomenon.Of course we would all love volume to be slightly higher, but there’s a downward trend.” Adele’s second album somewhat inflates the


comparison between the performances of Q2 2011 and 2011’sTop 10 artist sellers, but the comparative


“We have to get used to this story: success is not all about unit sales - and a drop in unit sales doesn’t mean the industry isn’t performing well” GEOFF TAYLOR, BPI


ABOVE Q2’s big hitters: Adele, Ed Sheeran and Nicki Minaj


seller, the V2/Universal title Brothers By Black Keys,were a more modest 12.2% lower than the 100th ranked album in 2011,while the year-on-year sales gap falls further still in 200th position where Cooking Vinyl’s Proclaimers release Like Comedy shifted just 3.4% fewer copies than the album in the same spot a year ago.This indicates the market is taking its biggest hit at the top end. Although there was nothing to match Lana Del


Rey and Emeli Sande’s debuts in Q1, the following quarter did have its fair share of big new releases with titles by Island’s NickiMinaj and Keane and Decca’s Gary Barlow and Commonwealth Band Diamond Jubilee album all making the quarter-end Top 10, but others failed to have the impact that was perhaps expected. The digital albums sector offered some good


news with sales up 15.0% overall in Q2, smaller than the 19.6% increase experienced during the opening quarter but still resulting in around 930,000 more units being legally downloaded than during the second period of 2012. It is also important to stress streaming and subscription activity does not contribute to the figures.When they were added into BPI stats for Q1 overall recorded music revenues were actually up, rising by 2.7% year-on-year. “Increasingly, just looking at unit sales figures


doesn’t give the full picture of the health of the industry,” saysTaylor. “We have to get used to this story that it’s not all


about unit sales and a drop in unit sales doesn’t mean the industry isn’t performing well.” None of this will help physical music retailers


who saw CD album sales fall by 22.7% in Q2 after a 25.4% drop in the first three months of the year. In the first six months of the year 9.1 million fewer CDs were sold compared to a year ago with digital only able to make up 2.2 million of the shortfall. Despite the downward trend,ERA’s Quirk


points to the success of this year’s Record Store Day on April 21 as demonstration there is still a healthy appetite for physical product. “We had stores with queues,”he says. “It was all


about the public buying vinyl and CD and it obviously shows there’s a demand for it.On the feedback we’ve had, 90 odd per cent of stores improved their sales from last year.” The big test now will be to get that renewed


public enthusiasm for physical formats increasing from just a day to all year round and Quirk points to the findings of joint BPI/ERA research into the market,which suggests one way forward may be a CD coming with a download version that on purchase is instantly sent to the device of the buyer’s choice. That is just a suggestion right now, but would


certainly meet the ERA chairman’s repeated belief that the retail battle for music sales is not a question of physical or digital, but recognising many consumers want both.


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