Sales Depts; Start Your Engines
The bars show YTD weekly progress compared with 2009 sales.
Are you tired of watching country sales totals dripple and drip like a leaky faucet? This week for the first time this year, they have finally fallen further into the red zone than the overall industry. In fact, according to Nielsen SoundScan for the week ending 9-5-2010, overall album sales are down -12.5% YTD while country album sales have dipped -13.2%. [see graph] Fortunately, help is on the way!
Currently country has scanned 23.859 million country units in 35 weeks, an average of .68 million per week. If the pace held steady over the year’s remaining 17 weeks country would end up with a meager 35 million units for the year, a disaster compared with the 46.13 million sold in 2009. But that is highly unlikely considering the holidays are always the strongest sales period and this year’s release schedule is especially powerful.
So what is the good news? The good word arrives in the form of upcoming CD releases from Jamey Johnson (9/14), Zac Brown Band (9/21), Kenny Chesney (9/28), Toby Keith (10/5), Sugarland (10/19), Taylor Swift (10/25), Jason Aldean (11/2), Reba (11/9) and Rascal Flatts (11/16). Finally after sloshing through months of underachiever releases, country is getting ready to start its sales engine. In fact, this writer is so optimistic about the lineup that if the steep downward tilt of the graph’s country trend line doesn’t improve, I promise to stop covering country sales. [There, I said it!]
- Crested Butte Songwriters Festival Debuts - November 28, 2011
- Scott Borchetta On CNBC Power Lunch - November 22, 2011
- Twitter Used To Rank Republican Candidates - November 21, 2011
Trackbacks & Pingbacks
[…] on Wednesday a report came out showing country sales fell further than the rest of the industry. Put aside all the arguments of what is country or not, country music has insulated itself from […]
[…] The year-to-date decline in country music sales has now fallen more than the rest of the industry. As of the week ending Sept. 5, country sales have declined 13.2 percent, compared 12.5 percent for other genres. […]
[…] the first time this year, sales percentages for country albums have dropped further than the overall industry when compared to last year’s […]
Leave a Reply
Want to join the discussion?Feel free to contribute!