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News
Record Labels See Digital Music Sales Hit a Plateau
Tuesday, November 1st, 2005 at 2:00 PM - by Brad Cook
While the introduction of the iTunes Music Store was seen as a boon for record labels weary of fighting the peer-to-peer networks, sales have plateaued in recent months despite the presence of evermore iPods. Charles Goldsmith, writing for Bloomberg News, covered the phenomenon in an article published on Wednesday.
According to Mr. Goldsmith, "digital music sales in the U.S., the world's biggest market, have hardly budged in the past five months. They almost tripled to 6.6 million downloads a week in the year through May, and were at 6.7 million in the week ended Oct. 23." Meanwhile, global CD sales revenue will shrink again this year, the sixth straight year of such a decline.
SG Securities media analyst Simon Baker, who's based in London, told Mr. Goldsmith: "Digital optimism seems to be crashing in on itself. This has devastating implications for predictions that digital sales would grow exponentially.''
Mr. Goldsmith also cited numbers from research firm Fulcrum Global Partners, which said in an Oct. 17 report that average downloads per iPod dropped from 25 annually to 15 during the past year. While iTunes Music Store revenue is such a small part of Apple's overall sales that such a development has hardly bothered investors, music label stocks have taken a beating, including EMI, which is currently trading below its May IPO (initial public offering) price.
The question now is whether or not the current trend can reverse itself. Mr. Goldsmith pointed to the burgeoning sales of cell phone ring tones as one potential long-term moneymaker for record companies, while music industry analyst Russ Crupnick told the reporter that Christmas iPod sales should help download revenues, which is what happened last year.
"There's been a lot of download activity from what's known as the early adopters,'' Mr. Crupnick said. "The challenge is: how do you maintain this? The industry has to do a stronger job of reaching out to more mainstream consumers.''
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