Online music repels disc sales

In the US, CD sales fell 4.2% in the first half of this year, however, profits from online music increased 77%. The development of online music business makes both record companies happy and worried.

The total revenue from music albums from CDs to cassettes and other formats in the first 6 months in the US only reached 270.6 million, compared with 282.6 million in the same period last year. The best-selling album to date is Disney Channel's High School Musical soundtrack (2.6 million copies). The album of Rascal Flatts, James Blunt, Mary J. Blige and Carrie Underwood ranked fifth. The decline has affected the sales of Mariah Carey and 50 Cent, the two singers who have won platinum records. last year.

In terms of music genres, R&B still prevailed with 53,806 copies sold, while still down 22.4% over the same period last year. Country music increased by 17.7%.

While the CD is still the favorite format for singers when it has been released in the past 5 years, fans are turning to downloading single songs or entire albums from online service sites. . From January 2 to July 2, nearly 281 million digital tracks were downloaded, compared with 158.8 million last year, indeed the market is very potential. In the first 6 months, there were 14 million albums sold in this form, twice as much as 2005.

The development of online music services is making both record companies happy and worried. Glad to have a new business channel, worrying about that, the revenue from CDs has decreased.

Among the 4 major record companies, Universal Music Group has the largest market share (31.66%), followed by Sony BMG Music Entertainment (26.25%), Warner Music Group (19.30%) and EMI Music. of the UK (10%).

Duc Thanh