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Business News Labels & Publishers Retail
ERA says record releases should be better spread
By CMU Editorial | Published on Wednesday 5 September 2012
The music retail sector has again said that the record companies should spread out their big releases more over the year, rather than having a big flurry of new artist releases in September and October followed by a load of pop and catalogue releases in the run up to Christmas.
The bunching of big artist releases in the final four months of the year is a pain for high street retailers in particular, who rely on customers coming in to buy one specific album, and then buying a load of other stuff while they are there. If three big albums are released in one week, then that’s only one stint of impulse buying, not three. The retailers argue that the labels also lose out, because when multiple major artists all release records in the same week, one or two of those artists will probably sell fewer units as a result.
Speaking to the BBC, Kim Bayley of the Entertainment Retailers Association said: “Cramming all the key releases in the fourth quarter is problematic both for consumers and retailers. The first half of 2012 has seen one of the weakest release schedules retailers can remember in both music and video games. It is very difficult for retailers to sustain their year-round investment in staff and rent when sales are crammed into such a short window”.
Responding, Universal Music’s Brian Rose said: “August is not a great month to release a big new record because most people aren’t buying music at that point. [But] we don’t put all our hopes into an autumn release period. We are very much a 52-weeks-of-the-year business, though there are solid business reasons to release a lot of them in the autumn. In December we’ll sell 20% of all the albums we’ll sell in a year, so it’s still a big opportunity”.
Although the bunching of big record releases is nothing new – and nor is retailers moaning about it – a report in The Independent earlier this summer quoted retailers as saying the tendency was getting worse. A particularly disappointing August in terms of record sales will only have added to concerns in the retail space.
