No surprise that figures due out later this week will show the British music industry experienced a big sales slump last year – with sales down 4%, the biggest downturn in a single year since the early eighties. That said in many ways the news could have been much worse. At the half way point last year the slump was nearer 7% - that figure came down thanks to key releases from the likes of Robbie Williams and Craig David, and that plethora of greatest hits albums, all released in the last quarter of last year. And while the UK has joined the global trend of declining music sales (we managed to buck the global downturn for a while), the slump here is somewhat less severe than in many other music markets around the world.
Needless to say major labels are blaming the slump on the growth in piracy, though to be fair they save the strongest accusations for the growing bootleg CD market rather than the MP3 downloaders. As reported in previous Dailys the production and sales of bootleg CDs have been helped hugely by recent technical developments in CD duplication. So much so the BPI reckon the bootleg music industry is now nearly half as big as the legitimate music biz.
While the figures should come as no surprise to anyone they will further major labels resolve to downsize where possible, and may perhaps prepare the way for another major label merger – more on that at www.cmuonline.co.uk