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Much gloom in IFPI and PRS figures
By CMU Editorial | Published on Tuesday 29 March 2011
Global record sales slumped by another $1.45 billion last year according to new stats from the International Federation Of The Phonographic Industry. The 8.4% slide meant the record industry generated $15.9 billion in revenues worldwide last year. Digital sales continued to grow, albeit at a more modest pace than a few years back, and now account for 29% of recorded music sales.
The two biggest recorded music markets, the US and Japan, were particularly hard hit again, accounting for 57% of that $1.45 billion decline. The UK, which has been more resilient than most markets in terms of the decline of CD sales, also had a bad year, and as a result lost its position as the third biggest music market to Germany. Only India, Mexico and South Korea saw year-on-year record sales increases.
Needless to say, the IFPI blamed piracy for most of the record industry’s woes, with their CEO Frances Moore telling reporters: “The demand for new music seems as insatiable and diverse as ever, and record companies continue to meet it. But they are operating at only a fraction of their potential because of a difficult environment dominated by piracy”.
Joining in with this party of gloom yesterday were PRS For Music, who revealed that the total royalties they collected for songwriters and music publishers fell by 1% last year, the first time the total royalties collected by the collecting society has gone down on the previous year.
Obviously, songwriters and publishers earn every time records are sold, so declining record sales impact on them also, although in recent years PRS has overcome declining record sales royalties with new or increased live, media, digital and international royalty revenues. But the record industry’s woes do now seem to have started to have an impact.
PRS big cheese man Robert Ashcroft said: “The loss of high street outlets, the slowdown in physical music sales as well as the challenges capturing the full value of music usage online has meant that for the first time we have seen royalties collected dip. Previously, any reduction from falling physical sales had been offset by our strong performance in music licensing both in the UK and internationally. In 2010 slower growth at home and abroad failed to fully mitigate the decline”.
So that’s all rather gloomy isn’t it? But on the upside… Oh, I don’t actually have any upside for you today. Hey, why not watch this classic video of Justin Bieber walking into a glass door to cheer yourself up.
