The Worst Year for Hit Albums in 23 Years

How can this possibly be? Interest in music in general, legal music downloads, and all the new gadgets people can use to store and transport audio ... is at an all-time high. Yet, the number of blockbuster albums (and the sales figures of the most popular CDs) continues to drop year after year.


As Chris Anderson explains in this Long Tail blog post:

It's January, so it's time to start updating the death-of-the-blockbuster stats. Here's my favorite, the precipitous decline in gold, platinum, multiplatinum albums (that's 500,000, 1,000,000 and 1-10 million units sold). According to the RIAA's database, just 285 albums were awarded one of those certifications in 2006, the lowest figure in 23 years.

The reason: As I wrote about before, we're moving from an economy of hits and misses to one of hits and niches. Consumers are as passionate about music as they've ever been. It's just that now the distribution of money and attention is spreading out. The hits aren't as big as they used to be, and niche markets are fattening up with increased exposure through blogs, podcasts, MySpace, YouTube, and more.

I've said it before and I'll say it again ... It's a great time to be an independent artist or music promoter. The tools of self-empowerment and self-expression are at your fingertips. The only question is ...

What are you going to do with them?

-Bob