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12.07.13 Music Week 13
numbers, especially given CD album sales dropped at a much faster rate (14.4% to 11.4 million units) than the digital albums market grew (up 10.2% to 7.9 million units). “It would be more reassuring if digital albums
were up a little bit more and take up the slack,” he says. “I can’t see any reason [why there is this drop]. I don’t think there are any excuses this quarter.” However, he is buoyed about a resurgent
vinyl albums market that doubled year- on-year with sales lifting 108.2% to more than 200,000 units, the sector’s highest Q2 total this century. “The vinyl revival continues
and must be on the back of Record Store Day, which was so successful this year,” he says. “A 100% plus increase is phenomenal, isn’t it?” In the week of Record Store Day in
April around 25,000 vinyl albums were sold, compared to about 10,000 the previous week and 15,000 the week after, while 45,000 physical singles were purchased, up from nearly 5,000 seven days before and approximately 14,000 the following week. “It continues to be good news. It isn’t just about old albums,” says the BPI’s Wadsworth about vinyl’s renaissance, reflected by Daft Punk’s LP being the top 12-inch seller of Q2 with 8,396 takers. That already made it the 13th biggest vinyl album of the century. Compilation album numbers continue to
impress, up 5.8% annually to 4.3 million units and led by Now! 84, the first in the brand’s near 30-year history to include Sony, which in May concluded a deal with Universal to buy EMI’s 50% share in the brand. This followed the EC ordering the sale of this stake as a condition of Universal buying the UK-headquartered major. Universal’s Rose says: “We’ve got a great new JV partner with Sony and we’ve got big plans for Now!, but big plans for compilations in general. We’ve been really driving that format hard over the last couple of years and it’s what consumers want so we’re going to continue to give it even greater focus, but the figures continue to be encouraging.” The upbeat mood is spread to the albums market as a whole with Rose noting: “We feel very positive
going into those last four months,” while Columbia’s Mark Terry at rival major
Sony is excited by a forthcoming release schedule from both his own company and those of his rivals. “We’ve got some very big records coming,” he
says. “I know the competition have got some big records as well. There’s a Tinie album coming, a Lily Allen record, Paolo’s heading down the tracks as well. We’ve got the Kings of Leon. We’re really excited about Mikky Ekko turning up this year. We’ve got a new Katy B album. It feels really buoyant and it feels really buoyant for UK music as well, which is always great to see.”
Q2 2013 TOP 100 SINGLES BY GENRE
Q2 2013 TOP 100 ARTIST ALBUMS BY GENRE
POP 39% (45%)
CONTEMPORARY URBAN 24% (25%) DANCE 19% (18%) ROCK 16% (9%)
MOR/EASY LISTENING 1% (1%) REGGAE 1% (1%)
ROCK 49% (33%) POP 28% (42%)
CONTEMPORARY URBAN 6% (13%) MOR/EASY LISTENING 4% (4%) DANCE 6% (3%) BLUES 2% (1%)
COUNTRY 2% (1%) JAZZ 2% (0%)
REGGAE 1% (1%)
Q2 2013 TOP 100 SINGLES BY ARTIST NATIONALITY
Q2 2013 TOP 100 ARTIST ALBUMS BY ARTIST NATIONALITY
US 42% (37.5%) UK 40% (44.5%)
EUROPE 11% (7%) OTHERS 7% (10%)
UK 54.8% (50.2%) US 31.2% (36.8%) EUROPE 9% (5%) OTHERS 4% (8%) VARIOUS 1% (0%)
INDIES: NON-MAJOR SHARE OF MARKET SOARS IN ALBUMS SECTOR WITH 16 TITLES IN TOP 100
Independents hit a purple patch in Q2 with their greatest share of a quarter’s Top 100 artist album sellers in more than a decade.
Non-major labels were behind 16 releases in the quarter-
end Top 100 chart, a tally not seen since the days when the likes of Jive, Sanctuary, Telstar, V2 and the original incarnation of Infectious were still part of the indie sector. The titles in question ranged from acts such as Vampire
Weekend and The National who have always been signed to an indie returning with new albums to the likes of Primal Scream, Queens Of The Stone Age, Status Quo and Texas moving from a major to independent life. In the case of Stereophonics it was a switch-back to an indie having seen their previous label V2 swallowed up by Universal, but who parted company with the major to issue current album Graffiti On The Train on their own Stylus imprint via Ignition. The high number of independent releases among the
quarter’s top sellers was matched by an overall market share that was not far short of what it enjoyed at the height of Adele’s 21 during the first half of 2011. Indie labels claimed a 26.5% share of all full- and mid- price albums sold during the quarter, amounting to around 4.5 million units and 2.8% higher than over the same period last year. The rise came despite the albums market in total dropping year-on-year, down 5.2%, according to BPI/Official Charts Company stats. It also controlled 26.1% of non-budget artist albums and, although its sales were down here annually by 2.3%, the drop was far less than the overall market decline of 7.7%. This 26.1% share compares to indie labels collectively
controlling 26.9% of artist album sales during the first three months of 2011 and then 27.2% the following quarter when
XL act Adele’s 21 was at its commercial peak. Such was the success of her second album that in Q1 2011 it alone accounted for 7.9% of all sales so temporarily inflating the independents’ overall market share. The fact in the quarter just gone indies came not far short to matching that number without the aid of such a runaway seller like 21 shows just how well they are currently doing. AIM chairman and CEO Alison Wenham reckons there are a number of factors to explain this success. “There is so much choice how to get to market these
days,” she says. “There’s a transfer value away from the majors to the independents driven by artists who have decided to assert more creative freedom and control and direction over their music. There is also the proliferation of new media platforms, which means consumers are driving
TOP 10 INDEPENDENT ARTIST ALBUMS Q2 2013 POS
ARTIST/ TITLE / LABEL
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
PASSENGER All The Little Lights Nettwerk
CARO EMERALD The Shocking Miss Emerald Dramatico/Grand Mono STEREOPHONICS Graffiti On The Train Stylus/Ignition QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE Like Clockwork Matador VAMPIRE WEEKEND Modern Vampires Of The City XL MACKLEMORE & RYAN LEWIS The Heist Macklemore TEXAS The Conversation PIAS
CARO EMERALD Deleted Scenes From The Cutting Room Dramatico THE NATIONAL Trouble Will Find Me 4AD
10 ALT-J An Awesome Wave Infectious Source: Official Charts Company
change, which allows them to discover music in so many different ways.” Wenham notes the diverse selection of acts contributing
to this success story, including such unlikely indie acts like Status Quo who spent much of their career on Universal and its predecessors but whose recent Top 10 album, the original soundtrack to Bula Quo, came out on their own Fourth Chord label. “It’s interesting,” she says. “You wouldn’t put the names
of these artists together and feel there could be a relationship between them. It’s brilliant and I think it’s set to continue now. We see a lot of confidence.” However, she acknowledges there was a period in the mid- 2000s when she was worried about the sector’s future as the likes of V2 and Sanctuary were bought up by the majors and a similar situation arising again “is still a concern”. But what is different now is some artists previously with
majors are trusting their futures with independents, among them Queens Of The Stone Age who were previously with Universal but whose Q2 album Like Clockwork came out on Matador and became their highest-charting release yet in the UK, debuting and peaking at No 2. At the same time one- time leading indie names Infectious and Mute, both acquired by a major, have been reborn as independent labels. A similar success story is being played out on singles with indie labels’ sales rising 37.3% year-on-year in Q2 and commanding a 20.1% market share. This compares to 14.7% in the corresponding period in 2012 and includes three of the quarter’s 10 biggest sellers: Nettwerk act Passenger’s Let Her Go, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’s Can’t Hold Us on the Macklemore label and the Ministry of Sound track Need U (100 Percent) by Duke Dumont featuring A*M*E.
All figures in brackets in these charts refer to Q2 2012 top 100 Source: Music Week research/OCC data
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