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and concludes what we've said on here for years is true - Albums are dying, singles (cheap) are booming...
Big hits getting bigger - but at a cost
Monday August 17, 2009
By Paul Williams
The biggest hits are getting significantly bigger with 2009's most popular
singles having sold more than twice as many copies as their equivalents
managed just three years ago.
Huge smashes this year by the likes of Polydor's Lady GaGa and La Roux,
Parlophone's Lily Allen and Columbia's Kings Of Leon have further raised the
bar in terms of how many sales are needed to make the very top sellers, with
the Top 10 singles of 2009 so far having sold at least 400,000 units each.
The trend further underlines the increasing difficulty of labels to sell
albums as singles dominate. At this stage last year a more modest 265,447
sales were required to breach the year's Top 10 sellers, while in 2006 the
benchmark was 189,968 sales. That is 110% lower than the sales of Dizzee
Rascal and Armand Van Helden's Dirtee Skank-issued Bonkers, which in the
year up until last week was 2009's 10th top-selling single.
Conversely, the most popular albums of the year are selling notably fewer
copies than their equivalents of previous years. Thus 2009's 10th top
seller, No Line On The Horizon by Mercury-handled U2, which had sold 329,969
copies by last week, is 24% below the sales of B Unique/Polydor's Employment
by Kaiser Chiefs when it stood as 2006's 10th biggest album at this point in
the year.
Polydor president Ferdy Unger-Hamilton, whose company has the year's four
biggest-selling singles through La Roux, Black Eyed Peas and two Lady GagGa
hits, says a hit single these days no longer automatically guarantees album
sales will follow.
"You need two or three hits to convince people to come out and buy an
album," he notes, a point emphasised by Lady GaGa whose Poker Face and Just
Dance are the biggest two singles of the year and Paparazzi the 20th,
helping to turn her album The Fame into 2009's biggest new release.
"Her album is really starting to come through and the same is now true with
the Black Eyed Peas," says Unger-Hamilton. "We started off with Boom Boom
Pow at number one and the album did okay and now we've got I Gotta Feeling."
The rapid growth of the biggest sellers is reflected by the overall singles
market where sales had grown year-on-year by 37.3% up to a week ago. At this
point in the year in 2008 total sales had just surpassed the 60m mark, but
in 2009 they have already comfortably surpassed 80m sales.
James Morrison's manager Paul McDonald, whose act's Broken Strings duet with
Nelly Furtado has sold more than 400,000 units and is the year's seventh
biggest-selling single so far, welcomes rising singles sales. However,
McDonald raises concerns about their effect on album numbers. "I noticed
with Broken Strings we seemed to be having some old-school numbers," he
says. "It's great if the singles numbers are high, but in a post-iTunes
world people, unfortunately, don't have to buy the album any more. If they
like the track they can just pay 79p for it."
Although Morrison's Polydor-issued Songs For You Truths For Me is one of the
year's 10 top-selling albums with more than 345,000 units sold in 2009,
McDonald concedes, "We haven't seen the numbers we might have expected."
Falling album sales are also further lowering the sales thresholds being
penetrated by debut albums released in the year. At this point in 2008 only
two debut albums issued during the year, Duffy's A&M/
Polydor-issued Rockferry and XL artist Adele's 19, had surpassed the
platinum benchmark of 300,000 sales. Five debut acts had reached the
platinum mark by the same week in 2007, while nine were at this level in
2006.
However, so far in 2009 only one debut released in the year has hit the
platinum mark: Lady GaGa's album, which had sold 673,806 units by last week
to rank as the year's second biggest-selling album.
In addition, Bella Union act Fleet Foxes' self-titled debut and
Columbia-signed MGMT's introductory Oracular Spectacular, both released in
2008, were recognised as platinum albums this year.
No 2009 debut album by a UK-signed artist has reached platinum status so far
in the year, something that has not happened in any previous year this
decade.
The closest to the mark currently is Island's Florence + The Machine whose
Lungs had sold 169,168 units to stand as the year's 33rd top seller a week
ago. Not far behind is Polydor act La Roux's eponymous debut whose 155,673
sales made it the year's 39th top seller by last week.
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