The Register reports Apple’s iTunes has experienced a collapse in sales revenues this year according to analyst co Forrester Research.
While the iTunes service saw healthy growth for much of the period, since January the monthly rev has fallen by 65%, with the average transaction size falling 17%.
And it isn’t just Apple’s problem. Nielsen Soundscan has grimmer news for prospective
digital download services, indicating three consecutive quarters of flat or declining revs for the sector as a whole.
“ITunes won’t save the music business, or Apple,” analyst
Josh Bernoff wrote in the report.
No Recovery
In 2005, iTunes sales dropped after Christmas before rising “significantly’ in May. That recovery didn’t materialize this year, Forrester said.
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The report also found that most music stored on iPods isn’t purchased from iTunes. Apple sells about 20 iTunes songs for each iPod purchased, even though the devices can store hundreds or thousands of songs.
I think we all know that “exposing” new music is getting harder and harder. Everybody is getting sucked into the sea of the long tail. How do you expose “great” artists in the sea of mediocre artists? This reminds me of communist Russia, nobody wins, both artists and labels. In fact, labels should be extremely concerned with the current state of radio. Overly tight playlists does not give labels motivation to sign new artists, it’s demotivating.
Radio consolidation is shrinking playlists and creating a homogenized musical landscape, several singers and songwriters told the Federal Communication Commission on Monday.
“Big radio is bad radio,” Rick Carnes, president of the Songwriters Guild of America, told FCC commissioners in the second of six public meetings nationwide. “You can drive I-40 from Knoxville to Barstow, California, and hear the same 20 songs on every country radio station.”
Grand Ole Opry star Porter Wagoner said “clear channel” used to mean a powerful coast-to-coast radio signal like the one that used to broadcast the Opry.
But he said when you say it now, people think about Clear Channel Communications, the media conglomerate that owns hundreds of radio stations and other media outlets.
Wagoner also said radio consolidation restricts the ability of both veteran and new artists to be heard.
“The days of an artist receiving airplay as a new act are gone,” Wagoner said.
He recalled how his former duet partner, Dolly Parton, scored a huge country and pop hit with the song, “Jolene,” and he said, “The chance of that happening today is almost slim to none.”
Executives of Sirius Satellite Radio are again hinting at a potential merger with XM Satellite Radio that they say would bring strong gains for investors.
Sirius executives mentioned “significant benefits” and “value creation” from a combination of the two radio companies.
“Consolidation creates value . . . particularly when you are in the same industry as anothercompany to be able to combine,” Sirius chief executive Mel Karmazin said
XM and Sirius are both facing slowing subscription growth and huge debt. Neither company has yet earned a profit.
“Both Sirius and XM could prosper much more easily if they took up the fight against terrestrial radio operators, rather than against each other,” Moran said.
Google has completed the development of radio advertising system and begun a limited test allowing customers to buy ads via its online ad-buying system.
Google Audio Ads is working with more than 700 radio stations covering more than 200 metropolitan U.S. markets. Analysts expect Google Audio Ads to shake up the $20 billion annual U.S. radio advertising industry by offering a simplified Web-based purchasing process for radio ads to its existing base of hundreds of thousands of text advertisers
One executive at a big radio company said last month the industry was moving cautiously in its dealings with Google.Â
Bank concurred, saying: “There’s a real mixed emotion among radio operators.” On the one hand, Google’s entry may turn radio advertising into more of a commodity. “A disaster could occur if people who were buying spots offline started buying online at a lower pricing level,” Bank said.
Google is seeking to expand beyond the pay-per-click Web search advertising market it dominates to offer advertising across a range of traditional and new media formats ranging from newspapers to online video.
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