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Business News Digital Labels & Publishers Retail Top Stories
Entertainment sales down despite digital boost
By Chris Cooke | Published on Wednesday 13 March 2013
Online entertainment services of all kinds continued to boom in 2012, according to stats aggregated by the Entertainment Retailers Association, though overall the entertainment retail market declined 12% to £4,213.4 million. The trade body blamed the continued stresses of the shift to digital, plus a weak and bunched release schedule, for the decline.
On the online side, when mail-order services are added to download and streaming platforms, both the music and gaming sectors now make more than half of their revenues via the internet as opposed to on the high street, with only the video side of entertainment retail still relying more on the flagging ‘bricks n mortar’ stores.
Meanwhile, by combining data from the Official Charts Company, GfK Chart-track and IHS Screen Digest, ERA reckons that truly digital sales of music, games and video passed £1 billion for the first time in 2012. And in the download space, sales of video was up 20.3%, games 7.7% and music 15.1%.
ERA’s annual stats book also notes the significant rise of the streaming platforms which have seen by far the most rapid growth in the last year, even if overall they still account for only a minority of revenues. It is mainly music streaming services that have seen most growth so far, with at least 3.7 billion music streams delivered in the UK in 2012, 40% up on 2011.
Commenting on the streaming boom, ERA boss Kim Bayley told CMU: “Digital retailers and service providers are leading a revolution in the entertainment business. Building on the success of download stores, streaming services are changing the music landscape. Just a couple of months ago the Official Charts Company was celebrating the 60th Anniversary of the Official Singles Chart and calculated that 3.7 billion was the number of singles sold in the UK since 1952. Now we discover that is also the number of music streams served in the UK by ERA members during 2012. That is extraordinary”.
While on the less exciting revenue decline, she continued: “This decline cannot be blamed on the broader economy. Overall leisure spending actually grew by 3.7% [last year]. Entertainment’s problems in 2012 were a combination of structural change and one of the weakest release schedules on record. And 2012 suffered from a weak schedule across all entertainment formats. It was a particular blow to specialist entertainment retailers who are reliant on the quality of the product they are delivered”.
The entertainment industry always has up and down years when it comes to the number of mega-selling releases overall, though scheduling of big releases is also an issue. A frequent gripe of the entertainment retailers of late has been an increasing tendency by music, gaming and film companies to put more of their releases into the final quarter to capitalise on the Christmas market.
The retailers say that that trend reduces consumer spend overall, and especially impacts on impulse purchases (if consumers pop in store five times a year to buy the big releases, they will likely impulse buy other products five times – if all the five big releases arrive at once, there’s less opportunity for those extra sales).
Retailers will continue to pressure labels, and game and DVD publishers to more evenly scatter their big product launches, though many recognise that 2012 was a particularly bad year in that domain as British entertainment firms tried to avoid clashing with major events like the Diamond Jubilee and Olympics when it came to releases.
As for the big entertainment sellers overall in the UK last year, well, DVDs and games dominate, though look at Emeli Sandé there with the fifth best selling release, outperforming even the Now albums. Well done her. Here is the Top 15 with units shifted listed on the right:
1. Call Of Duty: Black Ops II (Activision Blizzard) – 2,672,364
2. FIFA 13 (Electronic Arts) – 2,601,877
3. The Dark Knight Rises (Warner Home Video) – 1,694,434
4. The Twilight Saga – Breaking Dawn – Part 1 (Entertainment One) – 1,515,604
5. Emeli Sandé – Our Version of Events (Universal/Virgin) – 1,446,844
6. Now That’s What I Call Music 83 (EMI/Universal) – 1,389,006
7. Avengers Assemble (Walt Disney Studios) – 1,349,937
8. Ted (Universal Pictures) – 1,188,295
9. War Horse (Walt Disney Studios) – 986,870
10. The Hunger Games (Elevation Sales) – 946,592
11. Mrs Brown’s Boys – Series One (Universal Pictures) – 913,145
12. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (20th Century Fox) – 888,629
13. Assassin’s Creed III (Ubisoft) – 886,198
14. Now That’s What I Call Music 82 (EMI/Universal) – 866,031
15. Prometheus (20th Century Fox) – 853,079
