Top albums miss out on million-sales mark as music streaming grows

For the first time in almost three decades there will be no million-album-selling artist in the UK in 2013, barring the very unexpected, as a lack of breakthrough records and the rise of streaming services such as Spotify hit sales this year.

The biggest-selling artist album of the year to date is Emeli Sande’s Our Version of Events, with 600,000 sales. It was released last year and was the only million-selling artist album in 2012.

The last time no album made it to a million was in the pre-CD era of the early 1980s, according to research compiled by the industry magazine Music Week.

Senior music executives offered a blunt analysis: albums have simply not been good enough. “There just hasn’t been a breakthrough record this year,” said one. “Lady Gaga has come out late in the year, Robbie Williams has come out too late as well. Daft Punk really only had one single [Get Lucky] as a hook for their album, and David Bowie gets the media excited but the public haven’t really [got excited]. It has just been one of those years.”

Despite the sales slump, industry sources said it would be premature to announce the death of the album. Overall album sales in the UK will be down only slightly year-on-year, and digital sales are up 9% or 10%. Sales of compilations such as the long-running Now! That’s What I Call Music franchise are up.

“There is not one silver bullet answer but the bottom is not falling out of the album market,” said a second industry executive. “There has been something of a shift to streaming, and that data is not included.”

Album sales figures from the Official Charts Company include only retail sales and digital downloads from the likes of iTunes and Amazon. “It’s no longer relevant to look only at album sales – many fans are now streaming albums on services like Spotify and Deezer,” said a spokeman for the BPI, the music trade industry body. “These are growing very rapidly, but are not reflected if you look only at album sales. The outlook is in fact positive overall for 2013.”

According to the BPI, streaming is the fastest-growing part of the digital music business. Last year UK consumers streamed 3.7bn songs on audio services, and that figure could almost double this year.

And in terms of online videos, Dailymotion, the second largest video site after YouTube, reckons as many as 60m official music videos are watched on its service each month.

With big album launches still to come from Susan Boyle, Gary Barlow and One Direction – which all officially go on sale next week – the music companies hope a late festive sales rush will still make for a merry Christmas this year.

“Usually there are a number of big albums that tend to come out at the start of the year and grow in sales in the months that follow – Adele and Emeli Sandé are two recent examples that particularly come to mind,” said the BPI spokesman. “But this year the pattern seems to be different, with more major releases held back to the pre-Christmas period. The outlook is in fact positive overall for 2013.”

Top five bestselling albums in 2013 to date 1 Emeli Sande Our Version of Events; 2 Les Miserables; 3 Bruno Mars Unorthodox Jukebox; 4 Michael Bublé To Be Loved; 5 Daft Punk Random Access Memories.

Top five bestselling singles 1 Robin Thicke Blurred Lines; 2 Daft Punk Get Lucky; 3 Avicii Wake Me Up; 4 Passenger Let Her Go; 5 Naughty Boy La La La.

Source: The Guardian