6. CD Sales Investigation

During this period of time in an ever developing world, the budding internet is offering a huge variety of ways to view, listen to and download music and videos for free. Although this is incredibly convenient for many, it does mean that CD and Album sales have begun to plummet during the last 5 years.

Death of the physical Album & CD?

For the week ending May 30, the U.S. music industry sold a total of 4,984,000 albums, according to Nielsen Soundscan. This figure, which includes new and catalog releases, represents the fewest number of albums sold in one week since Soundscan began compiling this data in 1994. Taking this into account when comparing to the album sales for the week ending May 31, 2009, totaled 5.76 million. The highest one-week tally recorded during the Soundscan era is 45.4 million albums, in late December, 2000. This is a considerably large drop in sales, and one can't help but wonder, is it the beginning of the decline and death of physical album and CDs? According to Billboard's estimation, that weekly album sales volume could, in fact, be at its lowest point since the early 1970s.

Whatever the benchmark for album sales in the past few years, industry executives agree that this week's album sales total of 4.98 million units is "pretty scary," in the words of Bruce Ogilvie, CEO of leading music wholesaler Super D. However, digital track sales for the week totaled 21.7 million, and are distinct from the album sales tally, which links to my previous point emphasizing the growth of power of the internet in aspects such as programme's like iTunes where music is paid for prior to being downloaded. UMGD's Urie cites this week's album total as "all the more reason why everyone in the industry should be focused on getting the U.S. Congress to introduce legislation that makes the Internet service providers our allies in fighting piracy. Piracy is getting worse and worse and the government needs to focus on that."

Piracy

Following the death of notorious filesharing and piracy program, Limewire, killed by the US courts after a four-year battle with the Recording Industry Association of America, its legal rivals are beginning to voice hope.
"It's a huge positive for the music industry that LimeWire has been shut down," Steve Purdham the outspoken chief executive of UK music streaming site We7 said. Although this has been incredibly beneficial to the sales of albums as people were unable to share files as easily as before Purdham still voices his conern;
"But what we don't want is for the site's users to simply move on to the next illegal peer-to-peer sharing site that grabs their attention."

Artists these days have now resulted in making money and cultivating success in several different ways. One which has been incrasingly popular is music festivals, as demands for live music are now rising. Examples of music festivals are Coachella and Lollapalooza in the USA and Glastonbury in the UK, just to name a few.

Coachella Music Festival

Appearing on TV shows and attending live interviews are also a great source of publicity as it shows stars active in society voicing an opinion or merely just making an appearance. A great example of this is Lana Del Rey's appearance on Saturday Night Live, which has promoted her image and her upcoming album release 'Born to Die'.

Lana Del Rey- Saturday Night Live