Factoid

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

According to this morning's paper, 2008 is set to be the highest-selling year for singles EVER, with total sales topping 100m for the first time (compared to 1979's 89m). Obviously physical sales are a miniscule proportion of this but even so, that's a lot of sales. (And christ only knows how many non-sale downloads are going on).

I was a bit surprised by this!

Comments

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

but they're not really comparing apples with apples (hahahaha, honestly not an intentional pun!!!) are they?

100 million individual tracks downloaded != 100 million single sales

ppl be cherry picking tracks they like, not tracks The Man has decided they can buy...

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Yup, obviously there's some long tail stuff going on here, and the percentage of singles sales represented by the Top 40 is probably at an all time low too (which isn't the sort of data the Official Charts Co releases). I still think it's an impressive stat, though, given how easy it is to NOT pay for music.

And I think the percentage of tracks selling as singles which have never been promoted as singles is probably tiny too, so the real difference is in the capacity of shops to keep records in stock rather than in The Man's gatekeeping powers.

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

rly? i was thinking it was more like, "well i like the single so i'll get that and i'll get these other two tracks off the album while i'm here"...

...admittedly i've not actually done this myself, but then i'm only responsible for 5 of this 100 million.

also, 79 million singles in 1979 would be at least 158 million tracks, amirite?

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I think the concepts of single and album are too embedded for that kind of cherry-picking to have really caught on, but this is just a hunch. Obviously SOME people are doing it, or iTunes wouldn't run its "complete the album" promotion where you can buy the 'rest' of an album at a discount.

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

did you see maura's thing (http://idolator.com/5053104/there-are-still-people-out-there-who-will-pay-two-bucks-for-a-soundgarden-album) about alBUM sales and amazon online discounting?