Been looking at the future of the music industry recently after a colleague of mine recommended to a major high street retailer that they should ditch selling records and turn their high profile stores into something akin to Nike town. The retailer in question, whilst offering a great way to lose £40 in a lunch break, have indeed taken a long time to "get with this web thing". For ages they refused to lower their prices, charging £14 or more for a chart album when their online rivals (no, not the good ship CDWOW) were selling the same UK product for £7 to £9. DVD's were no different (£24 versus £12) and only back catalog re-issues offering any kind of value (have you seen how many Tina Marie albums you can get for £40?).
The truth of the matter is that currently, digital sales account for approx 3% of total revenue compared to 87% of CD sales, so nobody's going for an early bath just yet. However, the nature of how we all discover and acquire (not always buy) music is evolving rapidly and within a few years the landscape will be considerably different.
There's a good article about the future of retail here from the BBC (who have been great at documenting this drama as it unfulrs (see next post).
No comments:
Post a Comment