A new report says streaming of pop music was up 58% in the first half of 2016. Everything else is in the toilet. Album sales were down 14%. Song sales were down 24.2%.
On demand audio streams were up 107.8%.
Fans don’t need to keep or own the current music. They’d rather just listen to it on a service on their phones.
What we can infer: The days of buying music, owning it, playing it at home, having an album collection — that’s over. Since the music is meaningless, and it’s all similar, there’s no feeling that it’s important.
There are some exceptions: Beyonce’s “Lemonade.” Adele’s “25.” Or “Hamilton,” which people buy and memorize. But for the most part, music by today’s poplets from Drake to Bieber to Selena– it’s been reduced to a ring tone.
Kanye West didn’t think enough of his “Life of Pablo” to release it properly in any form.
In the first six months, Prince landed two albums in the top 25 thanks to his untimely death.
Vinyl sales were up, although I don’t know why. I was so glad to get rid of warped records that skipped back in 1982. And it’s not like vinyl is still $5.98. These records sell for an average of twenty two bucks! How crazy is that? What’s next? Raccoon coats?
The top vinyl albums were David Bowie’s “Blackstar” (33K), Adele “25,” and “Purple Rain.” The Beatles sold just over 12,000 copies of “Abbey Road,” and Miles Davis made money from just over 12K of “Kind of Blue.” Kind of weird.
All the numbers come from a service call BuzzAngle Music.
