// Home / News

Music industry torn over album download success

By Stewart Mitchell

Posted on 3 Jan 2012 at 10:23

The UK record industry has called for more Government protection against online piracy - despite legitimate downloads soaring.

According to figures released by music industry body the BPI, digital album sales rose 26.6% to 26.6 million which helped balance a large drop in CD sales.

Combined sales of digital and physical albums fell by 5.6% to 113.2m in 2011, with albums on CD declining 12.6% year-on-year to 86.2m in total.

The BPI has been lobbying against changes that it believes could weaken copyright law, and has called for greater protection from the Digital Economy Act, despite the increase in paid-for downloads.

The drop in artist albums is piffling in the context of the challenges faced by the retail and entertainment industries as a whole

“Led by Adele, Jessie J, Coldplay, Ed Sheeran and others, records by British artists in 2011 achieved both critical and commercial success both at home and around the world,” said Tony Wadsworth, BPI chairman.

“But the challenge of sustaining this performance against a backdrop of chronic piracy means that Government action remains absolutely crucial for British artists and their labels.”

BPI spin questioned

However, the BPI's stance has been called into question by some observers, who claim the 5.6% fall in overall sales is not a bad result during the ongoing economic downturn.

“What that means, in translation, is 'We’ve done better than our pessimistic predictions, but don’t be fooled – we’re still too incompetent to sustain that success in the face of technological change, so we want the Government to guarantee our future for us',” said Mark Goodge, a musician, local politician and activist, on his blog.

“As for 'chronic piracy', it really doesn’t seem to be happening at all,” he said, citing estimates that album sales excluding compilations had dropped by only 2.5%.

“The drop in artist albums is piffling in the context of the challenges faced by the retail and entertainment industries as a whole.”

Subscribe to PC Pro magazine. We'll give you 3 issues for £1 plus a free gift - click here

From around the web

User comments

They're still in cloudcuckoo land

'Digital' music started with the original CD. Since then all that's changed significantly is the method of distribution, and more worryingly, the quality.

If they (the Record Companies) had any imagination they'd have set-up a download distribution system years ago. Instead they pathetically ceded the whole thing to Apple.

That has had one very serious consequence: the download standard is heavily compressed to suit portable Music Players like iPod. It is completely useless to an audiophile audience who want to listen in HiFi. These guys don't spend £5k+ on decent systems just so they can hear all the compression artefacts in the 'music'.

If you want to load your HDD-based HiFi system with decent quality music, you mainly have to buy the CD and 'RIP' it to the HDD. A few firms, notably LINN offer brilliant 'Studio Quality' downloads, but the major Studios don't.

So what we are seeing is a situation in which the only people actually regularly buying CDs is probably the one group (HiFi fanatics) who'll happily pay MORE to download better than CD quality from the Internet.

Meanwhile Apple (and a few others) are taking most of the profit out of 'popular' MP3 quality music via their download stores. The worst of all possible worlds!

By wittgenfrog on 3 Jan 2012

I wish they would offer Lossless (at least CD quality) copies because I refuse to buy DD until they do because it feels like I'm wasting money on inferior versions.

BTW, why is piracy the automatic reason for lower sales? Maybe people CAN'T AFFORD them or maybe they DON'T WANT ANYTHING?

Also, why does 1 pirated song=1 lost sale? People may want to try before they buy, in some cases stuff is leaked so they can preview it or maybe they wouldn't have bought it anyway.

The behaviour of the media industries in general though doesn't help in our changing world where things like format shift shouldn't be a problem (didn't they put up a fuss with google music and when the government talked about making it legal to rip CDs?).

By tech3475 on 3 Jan 2012

But this only tells half the story, right? Why aren't they telling us about the increase/decrease in individual song purchase?

I will now only buy the tracks in an album that are good. If I bought 8 out of 10 tracks, would that be considered an album purchase? Probably not, but it's still a significant sale.

If they stopped counting in old currency, and revised their method of tracking sales performance to meet the contemporary way we consume music, they might get a happy surprise.

But of course, that wouldn't advance their push for closure of torrent sites and limited freedom to play songs, if everything was seen to be chugging along contentedly, would it...?

By BabyDinosaur on 3 Jan 2012

chronic piracy!

Aha, digital sales are actually doing really well, therefore there must be "chronic piracy"...

Well there we go, makes sense [I'll turn off sarcasm mode now]...

By stevenutt on 3 Jan 2012

What? No Filler??

The point about individual tracks is well made. The music industry loved the album format, where you had to buy the filler with the meat. Now, those surplus-to-requirement tracks get left on the shelf where they belong, bands can't put together enough decent tracks to fill out the new longer-format media and the only people left happy(er) are the punters. Whatever next? Honest bankers??

By Avatar on 5 Jan 2012