A Good Year for Music

2011 sucked for a lot of reasons but one bright spot in the gloom is that the music industry got it’s groove back (pun intended?).

What was truly the best thing about it all was that Adele proved to the music industry that if it creates and supports quality and originality, people will buy their sh*t again.  Also, that the album format isn’t dead when it’s a true artist at work, it is only dead for “artists” like Ke$ha who is really just recording to make enough money to pay back her mom’s methadone dealer.

Here’s the Wall Street Journal, first on concerts:

The 50 top-grossing tours, led by U2, took in a total $3.07 billion, up 3.7% from 2010. Those tours sold a combined 35.5 million tickets, down 8.7% from the year earlier. Average prices for those shows, however, leapt 13.6%, to $86.53, the magazine said.

The box-office uptick was welcomed by the concert industry, which suffered a down year in 2010. But the ongoing decline in number of tickets sold could be a sign that consumers are still put off by ticket prices.

…and on recorded music sales:

The increase in yearly album sales, as measured in units, was only the second such increase since 2000, just before digital piracy and other problems began eroding the music market. Even at 330.6 million units, up 1.3% from 2010, album sales were almost 58% below their peak level in 2000. The retail value of those albums is unclear, since SoundScan measures only units sold. Physical retailers and record companies cut prices of albums last year.

Individual song sales grew 8.5% to 1.27 billion songs, a more robust increase than in previous years, when growth flattened.

Combined album and song sales increased 3.2%, using a measurement that counts 10 songs as the equivalent of an album.

Obviously the bus was driven by U2’s tour and Adele’s runaway album 21.  Head over below for more details…

Source:

Concert, Music Sales Rose in 2011 (WSJ)