As I stepped through the door, I saw a multitude of escalators carrying excited and eager customers toward their destination. Above me hung several large posters with pop culture references and events printed on them. On my visit to New York City in 2008, the Virgin Megastore in Times Square exemplified the ability for a music store to make an impact on consumers and tourists. Amidst all the large video screens and flashing lights, the red logo of the Virgin Megastore seemed to have an intrinsic value on the landscape surrounding 42nd Street. The next time I visited the store a year later, it was having a going-out-of-business sale. No posters hung from the ceiling, and the aisles that once were full of records and CDs appeared vacant.
Compact disks, like vinyl records before them, are on the steady path to extinction as consumption of music moves into the digital realm. In 2011, digital music sales surpassed physical media for the first time. Digital sales accounted for 50.3% of all music purchases, leaving 49.7% to physical media. Furthermore, digital sales rose by 8.4% while physical sales fell by 5%. While digital media surpassed physical by only a margin of 0.3%, the shift in physical sales points to a significant trend.
Small and large CD and record stores continue to face difficulties trying to combat the shift to digital music. World Entertainment Corp., the company that owns the FYE (For Your Entertainment) chain of music stores, claimed they would close fifty-two stores after another holiday season with falling sales. Even more startling: over 3,000 independent record stores have closed in the United States over the past decade.
The issue of Internet piracy also aids in the decline of music sales. Although the U.S. courts shut down the P2P (peer to peer) service LimeWire, software like Bit Torrent and sites like The Pirate Bay provide easy access to illegal music downloads. In response, many free-streaming services have been created in order to provide a legal means for consumers to listen and enjoy free music. Pandora, Spotify and Last.fm all enable people to control what they listen to for free. Unlike other Internet radio stations that cycle through random songs limited to similar artists or genres, Spotify, the newest streaming service, works almost like an online version of iTunes. This platform provides listeners with a wide array of complete albums and artists to enjoy.
As more emphasis is put on criteria such as the iTunes top ten-downloaded list or the amount of YouTube hits a song gathers, people lose interest in buying complete albums and collect singles instead. For example, LMFAO’s “Party Rock Anthem” currently has 414,350,064 views, making it the second most viewed music video in 2011. “Party Rock Anthem” also came in second for overall digital sales in 2011.
This year Billboard decided to consider the download of ten digital tracks as an album. This classification showed that for the first time since 2004 albums sales increased. Surprisingly, vinyl record sales increased as well by 36.3%. In order to promote the growth of smaller artists, the music industry needs the profits generated by well-known artists to lessen the risk associated with signing a new band. Hopefully, the increase in music sales continues throughout 2012 and helps restore some of the physical sales of CDs. If vinyl and CD sales can increase, maybe the record store can be saved from extinction.
A survey of a few Conn students reveals the different feelings that people have toward the music industry today. One Conn student said that he only buys CDs made by his favorite band. For the rest of his music, he uses illegal downloading sites or borrows CDs from his friends. Another student said that he buys music from iTunes in order to support a band he thinks needs the money. However, if the band is popular, he does not buy their music. One student usually tries to buy most of his music in the CD format because he feels that the artists deserve to be paid for their work and dedication.
Luckily, the market for music is not disappearing; it is just shifting from one platform to another. Just like tape cassettes and vinyl, the CD might slowly fade out without completely disappearing. A few persistent record and CD stores will linger to provide their services to those who seek a little-known artist or album.
