Good news for, erm, fans of bad news. Yes, the UK record industry, a territory that has in the main not suffered the kind of record sale slides experienced elsewhere in the world in recent years, has confirmed CD sales are down by 10% for the first half of 2007 compared with 2006. While digital music sales are up, new figures from trade body the BPI show digital album sales are nowhere near making up the shortfall in physical sales. Even with digital singles and realtone ringtones sales included, both of which are growth markets for the labels, there is an overall decline.
Coming so soon after the collapse of independent music retailer Fopp, and the news that HMV continues to struggle, and figures from the International Federation Of The Phonographic Industry showing similar trends globally, it's all a bit doomy and gloomy. Though, of course, comparing monthly or quarterly sales figures year to year isn't always that reliable, because a small number of big releases can have a significant impact on overall stats, and they come at different months in different years. So it's possibly not quite as depressing as you think. Look, Jim Batchelor, co-Chairman of the UK's Entertainment Retailers Association, is managing to be a bit positive. He told reporters yesterday: "To be honest these figures are much better than we had feared. The release schedule in the first half of this year was very slow with few big acts delivering albums. The fact that, in spite of it all, we're still selling around 10m albums a month shows the resilience of demand".
PS: I've just got my hands on a copy of the BPI report all this comes from, and it seems to be spinning some other good news stories too. We'll round up them tomorrow, just so we all have something to smile about. Smiling is important.