CD sales have dropped. A friend of told me that the #1 selling CD in the US last week only moved 63,000 copies. This is insane when you figure that not too long ago hard copy CD sales could exceed 2 Million on the first week of release of a popular artist’s latest recording.
According to marketingcharts.com “Enders forecasts that overall music sales in 2009 will be half the level of the peak of the CD boom.”
I quote the IFPDI Digital Music Report 2008: “Tens of billions of illegal files were swapped in 2007. The ratio of unlicensed tracks downloaded to legal tracks sold is about 20 to 1.”
The Economist on January 10th said: ” In America, according to Nielsen SoundScan, the volume of physical albums sold dropped by 19% in 2007 from the year before—faster than anyone had expected. For the first half of 2007, sales of music on CD and other physical formats fell by 6% in Britain, by 9% in Japan, France and Spain, by 12% in Italy, 14% in Australia and 21% in Canada. (Sales were flat in Germany.) Paid digital downloads grew rapidly, but did not begin to make up for the loss of revenue from CDs.…”
I wonder what this means? Is it that paid music is gone, or at least going? Or is it that music is going? I do not think it’s music. Since music was invented by God for His purposes, maybe God is just taking it back.
God has a purpose and a plan for how He will use His creation to further the Kingdom. We need to be willing to be used by Him in this new global revolution.
My friend put it this way: “People still want music, just the format will change. I really feel that the Lord is almost holding something back from our understandig at this moment, but it will be revealed shortly.”
More to come…
pastor mike weblog 
It used to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to put out a commercial CD — studio time, expensive equipment, highly skilled engineers and producers, a massive marketing machine, expansive distribution mechanisms….
But now some hack in a bedroom studio can put out an award-winning album for just a couple of thousand dollars. The CD “Okay” by a friend of mine, Jeff Caylor, for example, was recognized by Christianity Today as the #5 album of 2007 ( http://www.christianitytoday.com/music/reviews/2007/2007bestof.html ) — and he put it together himself. It beat out Switchfoot, David Crowder, Relient K, and others in CT’s list.
Some popular band or musician (I forget whom) made their album freely available online; you could download it an pay whatever you thought it was worth. They made millions. Perhaps that’s a sign of things to come….
Can’t stop the music…. 🙂