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CLASSICAL MUSIC ALBUM SALES ARE TINY
Washington Post - The dirty secret of the Billboard classical charts is that album sales figures are so low, the charts are almost meaningless. Sales of 200 or 300 units are enough to land an album in the top 10. . . .
It's not exactly news that album sales in all genres have been declining for years. Nor is it news that classical recordings are not top sellers. "The classical charts have always been looked at as in the 3-percenter club," says Alex Miller, general manager of Sony Masterworks. . . .
SoundScan, the company that provides sales data to Billboard, says it cannot officially release exact sales figures to journalists. Instead, all numbers are rounded to the nearest 1,000, so sales of 501 copies are reported as 1,000, and anything less than 500 is "under 1,000." On last week's traditional classical chart, only the top two recordings managed to sell "1,000" copies. Every other recording (including, in its second week, Hahn's) sold "under 1,000." The official total sales of the top 25 titles amounted to 5,000 copies, an average of 200 units a recording (sorry, "under 1,000"). And yes, that includes downloads.
A leaked copy of the SoundScan figures for a single week from the fall tells an equally sad tale. In early October, pianist Murray Perahia's much-praised album of Bach partitas was in its sixth week on the list, holding strong at No. 10. It sold 189 copies. No. 25, the debut of the young violinist Caroline Goulding, in its third week, sold 75 copies.
It's not exactly news that album sales in all genres have been declining for years. Nor is it news that classical recordings are not top sellers. "The classical charts have always been looked at as in the 3-percenter club," says Alex Miller, general manager of Sony Masterworks. . . .
SoundScan, the company that provides sales data to Billboard, says it cannot officially release exact sales figures to journalists. Instead, all numbers are rounded to the nearest 1,000, so sales of 501 copies are reported as 1,000, and anything less than 500 is "under 1,000." On last week's traditional classical chart, only the top two recordings managed to sell "1,000" copies. Every other recording (including, in its second week, Hahn's) sold "under 1,000." The official total sales of the top 25 titles amounted to 5,000 copies, an average of 200 units a recording (sorry, "under 1,000"). And yes, that includes downloads.
A leaked copy of the SoundScan figures for a single week from the fall tells an equally sad tale. In early October, pianist Murray Perahia's much-praised album of Bach partitas was in its sixth week on the list, holding strong at No. 10. It sold 189 copies. No. 25, the debut of the young violinist Caroline Goulding, in its third week, sold 75 copies.
1 Comments:
That's why we need Public Radio stations -- to make the people who could not care less about classical music support our taste.
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