i wonder what they'll be saying when cd sales are down....
Posted: 14 Dec 2008, 17:52
100 bucks says that downloaders are to blame
http://aria.com.au/pages/CDSalesSkyrocket.htm wrote: 4 December 2008 (SYDNEY) – With Christmas still three weeks away and consumers tightening belts on spending, the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) reports that CD sales have jumped as much as 57 per cent on a week-by-week comparison over the same period last year.
“For the past six weeks, we’ve seen a dramatic increase in physical album sales,” said Ed St John, ARIA Chairman and President and CEO of Warner Music Australasia. “Given the current economic climate, consumers appear to be re-prioritising their spending and music suddenly looks like a really attractively priced gift.”
The six-week uplift – which shows no signs of abating – commenced 27 October and shows a 22 per cent overall increase in CD sales from the same time last year. Over the same period, sales of the Top 5 albums are more than double the sales of last year.
“The release of highly anticipated blockbuster albums from Kings of Leon, AC/DC and P!nk appear to have been the catalyst for this spike in sales,” said St John. “But since then we’ve seen successive big releases from a whole host of acts – Nickelback, The Killers, Guns N Roses – and people seem to be rushing into music stores in numbers we haven’t seen for a long, long time.”
The week of AC/DC’s Black Ice release recorded a 47 per cent increase in physical sales over the same week in 2007. One week later, after pushing AC/DC from the #1 position on the charts, P!nk’s album Funhouse helped to push CD sales 57 per cent higher than the same period last year.
Australian Music Retailers' Association (AMRA) Chair and proprietor of Mall Music Geoff Bonouvrie credits both the state of the economy and the quality of albums to the rise in sales.