Music to biz ears
Overall sales jump; albums up 10 percent
Thanks to very brisk sales of soundtracks and albums from a diverse group of artists, the music industry will close 1998 with a unit increase of just over 4%.
The rise continues the industry's recovery, which began during 1997. The industry closed that year with a slight sales uptick of 1% over the previous year, ending an 18-month period marred by music store closures, slumping sales and shifting consumer musical tastes.
More than 780 million units were sold through the period ended Dec. 20, a 31 million unit boost from the same period in 1997, according to SoundScan. The 1998 tally is a 75 million unit uptick from the same period in 1996.
Album sales jump 10%
The unit totals -- which includes the sales of music in all formats, such as albums, singles and cassettes -- show a single digit bump, but album sales could close with a nearly 10% increase over last year. For the period ended Dec. 20, album sales were up just over 9% heading into a period of heavy sales.
For the second consecutive year, rap music played a significant role in boosting the industry's fortunes, aided by a plethora of multimillion unit selling soundtracks and teen heartthrobs acts such as Savage Garden, the Backstreet Boys and 'N-Sync. Those acts helped expand the record buying demographic to include larger numbers of teenage girls, and their presence on sales charts and radio playlists was one of the year's hallmarks.
Older consumers also returned to stores to get soundtracks and discs from adult contemporary artists like Celine Dion -- the big boost in the industry's unit tally came from such albums as the "Titanic" soundtrack, which went home with more than 9 million Stateside devotees and topped 26.5 million units worldwide.
'Titanic' boosts Dion, Sony
While Dion's already high profile was further raised by her presence on the "Titanic" disc -- which in turn helped sales of several of her albums, driving her recently released "Let's Talk About Love" to top 25.5 million units worldwide -- "Titanic" album sales helped raise Sony Music's industry profile and land it atop the current album market share chart.
In current album market share -- the listing of recently released albums, excluding sales of catalog product -- Sony's nearly 17.5% tally placed it ahead of Warner Music's 17.2% and BMG's 14.2%, the industry's place and show congloms for 1998. EMI's 13.9% tops Universal's 13.4% and Polygram's nearly 12%.
However, if the market shares of Universal Music Group and Polygram are combined, as they will be at the end of 1999, Universal would have closed 1998 with an unbeatable market share of nearly 24%.
Sony's rise to the top was aided by strong sales chart showings from Savage Garden, Will Smith, Lauryn Hill and the "Armageddon" and "Godzilla" soundtracks, while Ricky Martin's "Vuelve" was one of the industry's biggest Latin albums and continues to sell well.
Sony owns year
Sony also owned the two top selling discs of the year -- Dion's "Let's Talk About Love" and the "Titanic" soundtrack -- an industry first.
The music business expects another week of significant sales as the period following Christmas Day is typically the industry's biggest, as gift certificates are redeemed and consumers visit stores hunting for bargains.
"All signs point to a big final week of the year," Henry Droz, prexy of Universal Music and Video Distribution, told Daily Variety. "We're anticipating this year will be the best the industry has seen in a very long time."
