LOS ANGELES (Music
Industry online magazine) - This year's double-digit slump in album sales doesn't mean consumers aren't listening to music. They just don't want to pay for it. And it's unlikely that the final stretch of Christmas shopping will pull 2002 out of a nose dive.
Buyers have snatched up 597.4 million albums this year, compared with 669.7 million in the same period in 2001. The 11% drop follows last year's dip of 2.5%, the first no-growth year since Nielsen SoundScan began tabulating sales data in 1991.
After enjoying a decade of climbing sales, retailers were alarmed by the 2001 decrease and hoped the drop was temporary fallout from 9/11 and a weakening economy. Today they'd welcome such a benign stumble over this year's sizable plunge, which can't be dismissed as a fluke. The culprit?
"It's no deep mystery," says Geoff Mayfield, director of charts at Billboard. "A good part of the constituency that music stores used to count on has found other ways to grab music, whether it's burning a friend's CD or swapping on the Internet. Now a lot of these kids, from junior high school through college, are less inclined to spend money at a record store."
The 2001 tally, though disappointing, was attributed largely to the demise of the cassette format.
"Last year was a blip," Mayfield says. "It was standing up against the largest year since SoundScan began counting, so you had the gravity syndrome. There was nowhere to go but down. Second, we saw a big decline of the cassette. CD numbers were actually up."
Not so this year. In late June, overall sales were lagging behind 2001 by 9.7%. The gap widened despite the fourth-quarter arrival of hot sellers Shania Twain, Tim McGraw, Jay Z, Faith Hill, an Elvis Presley hits collection and the 8 Mile soundtrack. Albums in the upper rung of Billboard's pop chart performed as well as last year's leaders, "but the rest of the chart has been so soft that it can't keep pace," Mayfield says.
A dearth of trends added to the year's ills. Though country again is booming, it lacks the momentum of its renaissance a decade ago. Without a tsunami such as grunge or teen pop, sales tend to flatten, Mayfield says.
"There's no Pied Piper in play," he says. "Quality of music isn't the issue. Was Macarena great music? No, but it was the year's best-selling single. The problem may be that music isn't connecting with the consumer."
The exception seems to lie in the long-ignored demographic of older fans. Such adult-skewing artists as James Taylor, Bruce Springsteen, the Dixie Chicks and Alan Jackson seem immune to the industry malaise. Also stoking optimism: the chart this week boasts more titles with sales exceeding 100,000 copies than it did a year ago.
"We may be bottoming out," Mayfield allows. "But we'll have to traipse through a few weeks in the new year before we have a grip on the future."
