The Unfortunate Decline of the Album

Declining record sales is nothing new, it's been happening since the late '90's. But for music fans and consumers, is this what we really want? To witness the decline and the inevitable extinction of the tangible CD? Billboard reports that CD sales alone fell 20% in 2010 with overall album sales falling 12.8% in the U.S. (the world's largest market). In the U.K., album sales declined by 7%, with CD sales sliding down by 12.4%. The rapid increase in peer to peer file sharing and the availability of single song downloads are to blame. Yet, even with the increased volume of single song and full-length album downloads, the worldwide loss from illegal downloading to the music industry still remains in the billions of dollars per year.

In the last few years, several iconic record stores such as Tower Records (U.S.), Musicland (U.S.), Sam the Record Man (Canada), Music World (Canada) have closed, and now HMV (U.K.) has announced it will be closing 60 stores across Britain in 2011. Even the big-box stores such as Best Buy (U.S.) and FutureShop (Canada) use a faction of their available display area to sell recorded music.

For me personally, I remember how exciting it was to go to my local record store and shift through the thousands of titles to pick up something new or 'cool'. I know consumer trends have changed and we are now in a 'singles' society, but I think music fans are missing out if they opt to only buy a single and not the entire album. Sometimes an album track might end up becoming your favorite song, and now most consumers will never know that song because they only know the artist for their 'singles' (and listening to the artist's album tracks a few seconds at a time on sites like iTunes or amazon does not qualify for a proper assessment).

For example, Katy Perry had a huge year, yet her album, Teenage Dream has sold only 997,000 copies (in the U.S.) in 2010. However, her singles "California Gurls" (4+million), "Teenage Dream" (3.01 million) and "Firework" (2.33 million) have sold nearly 10 million downloads in the U.S. alone. But if that's all you know of Katy Perry, you might be missing out on other tracks on her album ("Circle The Drain") that you might find as equally or even more compelling. I guess what I'm saying is that it's great that we all have a virtual record store at our fingertips, yet I think we as music fans are missing out on those hidden discoveries that when we find a certain song on an album, it speaks to you, and you become a fan of it regardless if it's a 'single' or not.

It's time to set a new trend. Go back to your favorite record store (if it's still there) and find something new or 'cool' to discover and buy the CD!

the NHM