The U.K. recorded music business held up reasonably well in 2008 with trade value down by 5.3% to £894 million ($1.368 billion) and retail value down by 6% to £1.308 billion ($2.002 billion), according to new figures from trade body the BPI. That compares to falls of 13% and 15% for, respectively, trade and retail value between 2006 and 2007.
In 2008 album sales were still on the decline by 3.2% by volume while at the same time digital album sales was up 65% from 2007. Digital albums by Coldplay, Duffy and Kings of Leon each moved more than 100,000 units last year.
The figures also show that 109.8 million single tracks were downloaded in 2008, a 41.6% year-on-year increase. Digital tracks now account for 95.3% of the singles market.
“The rapid growth of the digital market is clear evidence that British record companies have the business models in place to deliver music to fans online,” said BPI chief executive Geoff Taylor in a statement.
“The impressive fact that one pound in every ten is earned online shows that labels are leading the way in the entertainment world in developing digital services.”
He added: “BPI’s research also shows that U.K. record companies invest 21% of turnover on sales in A&R expenditure – identifying and developing new musical talent – over the last three years.”
Rock was still the dominant genre in the albums market, representing 35.7% of sales, while pop increased its share from 22.3% to 25.3%.
In the retail sector, specialists still dominate the albums market, with HMV the market leader with a 24.1% share by expenditure. Tesco is the biggest mass merchant with a 10.5% share, while iTunes has 5.7% total market share in the U.K. and dominates the digital album market. The Internet home delivery services, including Amazon and Play.com, account for 17.6% of the market.
For singles, iTunes’ share of expenditure is up to 65.7% of the market, while unit share is 71.8%.
Research also shows that 7.2 million MP3 players were sold in 2008, with a third of the U.K. population now owning one. Almost a third (28%) of 16 to 24 year olds listen to music at least weekly on a mobile phone, with one in 10 using services such as Spotify and Last.fm at least once a week.
Source: Billboard
Music Ally has reported that over 445,000 people illegally downloaded the new U2 album. All these downloaded were alleged to happen between the 18th of February till the 3rd of March from BitTorrent sites.
The chart supplied by the company shows the spike in downloads following the album’s leak in February, apparently due to it being accidentally made available for sale on an Australian digital music store ahead of its official release on 2nd March.
The debate is always would these people have purchased the album if it wasn’t leaked on BitTorrent clients? No one can really answer that question, but I’m sure that certain sales would have happened because of this.
Overall this does make me think that the claims of the Pirate Bay in the last couple weeks that “80 percent of all their torrents are legal”, cant be true.
You need to get ears hearing the brilliant music you’ve worked so hard on. you need people to love you, and more importantly, pay your rent. Who are these people? If you can identify them, figure out where they’re going to listen to music, how they buy it, what attracts them to a band, then you’ll find it much easier to make yourself available to them. Transmit on the channels they’re already receiving on and you’ll see the ranks of your fans grow much faster.
Getting to know your fans means doing some research. When someone befriends you on myspace, message them asking about how they found you. Keep a record and add to it. When someone buys a CD or a t-shirt off you after a gig, get them to give you some details about themselves.
Collect postcodes, mobile numbers, email addresses, anything that makes it easier for you to tell fans when you’re next playing, or what fabulous new bit of your merchandise they can buy. Don’t pester them, no-one wants to fill out a 10 page questionnaire when all they were after was a badge: there are some sheets on the tools page that you can use as templates.
Consider ways to get people to part with their contact information. Using mobile services like StarTxt.com to distribute mobile content means you can send people tracks or wallpaper in return for their mobile numbers (if you have a lot of 14 year old girls in your fan club, that is).
A great tool for collecting information is the google forms service. If you don’t have a google account, sign up for one online in about 30 seconds, and you’ll be able to use google documents for word processing and spreadsheets. Alongside these applications is the forms service, which lets you build questionnaires to embed into widgets (see the sproutbuilder guide on the tools page) websites, myspace pages and wherever else you can think of.
Key information you should be asking your fans to provide includes in order of decreasing importance:
Email:
Name:
Post/Zip code:
Postal address:
Country:
Mobile number:
You should also record the date and place you got people’s details, so you can be more personal when you contact them. Keep this list close to your heart. Nurture it and watch it grow, because it’s the most important possession you have on the road to fame and fortune.
Respect your mailing list. It represents real people, people that you’re asking to do things with you, and for you. Be regular with your mailouts and updates, so that people keep you in their minds, but don’t spam them. One contact per fortnight per method of communication is fine. More, and you’ll start to bug people.
Things you should be writing to your customers about are pretty obvious; let them know when you’re gigging near them (postcodes are useful here). Let them know when you’ve got new content on your website, blog, or myspace page, or you’re doing a magazine interview or radio session that they might be interested in. Definitely let them know when you’ve got something new that they might be interested in purchasing, be it music or merchandise.
Learn from your list. If you get loads of people signing up at a gig, or after a particular event, you’ve done something right. Do it more, and harder.
