Rihanna LP scores number one with paltry sales: The record industry is dead man, miss him, miss him…
THE record industry has long been in decline. Basically, people got sick of the mark-up on CDs and, more importantly, were thunderously tired of having to find places for their CDs to live. MP3s may lack the character of vinyl and such, but boy howdy, they’re a lot neater aren’t they?
Sadly for the recording industry, MP3s (a format designed to maximise profits) are easily stolen, which has seen sales dropping dramatically. Which brings us to the news that Rihanna has just topped the album charts with the lowest sales figures EVER.
RiRi’s Talk That Talk album went to the top spot with a paltry 9,578 copies sold. Now, consider that you’d need to shift half a million or more to get in the British Top 20 in the late Sixties, and you can see the problem the record industry is facing.
And this is nothing to do with the quality of music on offer. Comparing music now to that produced in the sixties is a futile, pointless exercise. Let us not forget, the sixties bowed out with Rolf Harris topping the charts. Think on.
This dubious honour isn’t nearly as clear-cut as ‘the labels are fucked’. That’s because we currently live in a world where Adele has sold a gazillion records. The decline hasn’t been steady either. The last time we had a number one LP that sold this poorly was in ’93 when The Cranberries released ‘Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We?’, which sold 11,981. And the ’90s were something of a boom time for the record industry (remember all those cheap 45s, double CD singles, expensive promotional videos and giveaways with new releases?).
Muse, The Killers and Mumford & Sons will soon be releasing new music, which will no doubt show healthier sales, but will they match the rampant sales of yore?
Fat chance. That’s because there’s very little reason to buy music in the physical format these days because it is completely at odds with the way we live our lives in the cloud now. Of course, there’s no discernible spokesperson for a generation knocking about at the minute, who can shake things up and get people interested again… but has the public’s mindset drifted so far into cynicism that we may never see the likes of Dylan, Gaye or Chuck D again?
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Posted: 13th, August 2012 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts Comment (1) | TrackBack | Permalink
