Andrew Dubber at New Music Strategies has a great take on this graphic from Information is Beautiful.
While the multi-billion dollar recorded music industry has seen a steady decline in sales over the last decade, the industry as a whole may just be entering into “one of those golden ages for musical culture that seem to coincide with the skinny bits of that graph.”
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I think this might be one of the dumber analyses I’ve seen. It leaves out something so gigantic – the function and value of copyright — that I wonder if the person at New Music Strategies even knows how the music industry actually works (or worked). Think about it. How much of the gigantic revenue blob peaking in 1999 was catalog sales? I’m guessing quite a lot. And maybe more importantly, as catalog sales represent almost 100% profit for a record company how much of the “new” revenue stream in 1999 was facilitated by the free money from CD catalog sales? Again, I’m guessing quite a lot. The thing is, catalog sales as part of a record company’s business is over, unless something extraordinary happens such as the death of Michael Jackson. Digital, specifically, file sharing has killed it. Therefore, the 1973-1999 part of the chart has nothing to do with the 1999-forward part of the chart. It’s a different business. I don’t think the record business would be going gangbusters absent file sharing. There are clearly other issues. But to leave out the loss of catalog sales, traditionally a significant component of any record business entrepreneur’s business model, in a comparative analysis of the music industry, is well, dumb. And I’ve left out a lot.
In fairness to Dubber, he posts a longer analysis that covers some, tho not all, of those topics.
But I also recommend reading the comments over there – John Goldsby and many others are all over this issue.
I think the colors in the graphs are pretty.
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The colors in the graph are fantastic!! The analysis not so much.