News

Retail sales of recorded music in the United Kingdom sagged by an unprecedented 13% in the first three months of 2003, according to figures released May 14 by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI). British music fans spent £216 million ($351 million) in the first quarter of this year, compared to £249 million ($404.6 million) in the same period a year ago. In unit sales, albums in the UK declined only 4.8% to 44 million, but prices dropped 9.4%. UK album sales totaled £200 million ($324.9 million); singles were off 42%, accounting for only £16.2 million ($26.3 million).

BPI executive chairman Peter Jamieson blamed the drop on file sharing, CD burning, commercial piracy, and declining prices. Commercial piracy has reached epidemic proportions in Britain, as it has in the rest of Europe. BPI officials believe that the availability of pirated music has doubled during the past two years.

Commercial radio on this side of the Atlantic is also feeling the pinch. Reuters reports that US radio advertising revenues were off 2% in March, an effect of the war in Iraq. The Radio Advertising Bureau, a trade group of more than 5000 US radio stations, stated that local advertising revenues declined 3%, while national revenue rose 4%. March was a blip in an otherwise bright picture—for the quarter, local ad sales were up 2% while national ad revenue rose 8%.

Rock still rules: The Recording Industry Association of America's (RIAA) 2002 consumer profile shows that rock is still the most popular genre, with 24.7% of consumers claiming it as their favorite. Rock has been number one every year since the RIAA began surveying consumers in 1989. The rap-hip/hop genre is a strong second, having been voted most popular by 13.5% of US music fans. R&B/urban music was third, with 11.2% of the market, tied with country music with the same percentage. Pop is now the favorite with only 9% of music lovers; religious music ranks sixth, with 6.7% of the market. The US music business took in $12.6 billion in retail sales in 2002, a drop from the $13.7 billion reported in 2001.

The RIAA survey supports other such studies in finding that women buy slightly more recorded music than do men, 50.5% to 49.5%, respectively. In opposition to the music industry's received wisdom that young people are the most ardent buyers of music, the survey found that music fans over the age of 45 were the biggest segment of the market, 25.5% of the total. The 15–19 age bracket was the second-highest music-buying group, 13.3% of the total. Traditional music stores continued to give ground to big-box retailers and discount outlets; 50.7% of the survey's respondents said they do the bulk of their buying at such places, with only 36.8% buying from record stores. Online sales accounted for 3.4% of all purchases last year, an increase of 0.5% over the previous year. The vast majority (90.5%) of all recorded music sold was in CD format, although DVD-Audio releases accounted for a surprisingly high 1.3%.

The proportion of music sold online is apt to increase substantially in the next few years, if the initial success of Apple's iTunes music service is any indicator. The computer pioneer's online music store sold 2 million songs during its first 16 days in operation, with more than half sold as full albums at $10 each, and the remainder sold as individual songs at 99¢ each. The service has 200,000 tracks available from all the major labels, at present only for Mac users, with a Windows version to be launched later this year.

Collectors have enriched the estate of the Who's late bass player John Entwistle by approximately $1.6 million. On Tuesday, May 13, Sotheby's auction house sold off 350 lots of Entwistle's belongings, including jewelry, artworks, clothing, guitar cases, and guitars. Among the most sought-after items were a rare Gibson Explorer guitar, which sold for $152,000, and a pink Fender Precision bass called "Frankenstein" because it had been assembled from pieces of other instruments destroyed onstage. Frankenstein went for $100,000 to an unnamed American buyer. The auction brought in approximately twice the predicted total, stated Sotheby executives. Entwistle died of heart failure in a Las Vegas hotel last summer at the age of 57.