Album Buyers Show Up...And Buy CDs

Album Buyers Show Up...And Buy CDs
A couple things stuck me about the first-week sales totals for Kanye West, 50 Cent and Kenny Chesney. First, like many people I was surprised by the quantity of sales. West's Graduation sold 957,000 units, an incredible amount in a year when album sales are down 14%. 50 Cent's Curtis moved 691,000. Obviously the manufactured rivalry between the two rappers spurred sales. Chesney's Just Who I Am: Poets and Pirates moved 387,000, a number that would be for #1 in a typical week. Majors' release schedules have been flat this year and its new album launches have failed to inspire and excite consumers. Last week, there was finally some excitement in the air.

The other thing that stood out about last week's top three albums was their relatively low digital-to-total album percentage. From what I've seen over the years the higher album sales go, the lower that percentage becomes. To punch up to the high six digits, the CD needs to be as broadly distributed as possible. Digital sales are, of course, growing, but digital sales alone won't push an album to the top of the chart.

Last week, Kanye West's digital sales represented 14% of total sales. For 50 Cent and Kenny Chesney, the numbers were 8% and 9%, respectively. What those numbers tell me is those artists' labels and distributors did an good job moving the CD and getting sell-through (though I don't know what was shipped on each title). The albums' digital shares were good but lower than I expected. As a point of comparison, Grey's Anatomy Vol.3 debuted at #16 with sales of 26,000 and a digital share of 43%. Maroon 5's It Won't Soon Before Long has sold 1.24 million units in 17 weeks and has a digital share of 18%.

CD sales are down about 20% in 2007, but as these sales numbers show, the physical format still has some life left in it. The timing of the releases coincide with a season typically targeted because students are recently back to school and have money in hand. These are the same students that download music from P2P networks and by most reports have given up on the CD. So unless students suddenly discovered the CD, older consumers were the ones excited by last week's release schedule. (I'll point out that I haven't seen any new release CDs in the Vanderbilt bookstore in the last month. The one display rack, practically out of view, has product left over from last school year.)

Graduation sold more digital albums in one week than any other album. Digital sales, though, were not the reason for the huge first week. By squeezing as much as it could out of physical distribution, Def Jam and Universal Music and Video Distribution scored a fantastic first week.

Posted by glenn on September 19, 2007 10:06 AM
Bron:
http://www.coolfer.com/blog/archives/2007/09/album_buyers_sh.php