It probably does come down to a lot of factors rather than any particular reason, finances and streaming may well play some part, there's also surely a limit to catalogue sales too? I know they're still pretty huge but they were always going to slow down eventually.

There's a few reasons I disagree with this. Firstly, new releases only make up a tiny proportion of sales each week. Secondly, record companies were using that same release strategy for years in 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012 (and before) too, and they all saw increases in sales compared to their previous years. Thirdly, in the US everything is on air, on sale, and they're also seeing a decrease in sales compared to the previous year nearly every week (infact, for them it started happening in 2012, whilst in the UK this only started happening in the past couple of months).

 

The Uk seems to be unique in holding back releases though - the USA is so large that records either have instant fanbase appeal (and then drop or sell well over a long period) or they grow State by State, Station by Station. I'd say the prevalence of cover versions charting shows people get fed up waiting, though you may be right and the impact may be minimal. I'd like to see everyone not buying hold-back's on purpose as it's just chart manipulation. Nothing new there of course, the 90's were totally record company manipulations and it was so refreshing when downloads gave power back to record buyers. Then the charts got soooo slow once people were free to buy records forever rather than till it was deleted or they ran out of product. Onerepublic is currently an old-fashioned grower, hooray! I prefer to see charts accurately reflect popularity, just my preference..

 

On other comments: People aren't not buying due to lack of money. It's been 5 years already, and the biggest-sales have already happened during this downturn (far worse than previous recessions when record sales were affected pretty quickly). Relative to income singles and albums are cheaper than they have ever been historically, by far in the case of singles - the last time they were 79p/99p was in the late 70's , equivalent probably of £5 or more in current money. They cost less than a bag of crisps in a pub!

Yeah, but what I'm saying is that times have been hard for the last five years. It doesn't make sense to cite it when accounting for a trend which has only started in the last couple of months given single sales are now performing worse than all the way through 2012, when economically conditions were broadly more difficult than they are now.

I'm sure a lot of people will have looked at major items of expenditure they can cut before they look at the relatively trivial items such as 99p on a download. Some of them will now have reached the point where saving 99p (or even 59p) on a download makes a real difference.

Yeah, but the point I'm making is why would that suddenly be an issue in the last eight weeks in particular rather than at any other point over the last five years?

Or, on my theory that recessions = bad for album sales and good for single sales (and vice versa), does anybody know if album sales have been trending upward over the last few months above what we'd expect anyway going towards Christmas?

 

The best I can say of album sales, is that their rate of decline is slowing...

Spotify removed the five-play-limit on songs in the United Kingdom in March 2013, which is the only thing I can find date-wise that tallies with things. Certainly I started using it a lot more after that.

The reason for it is probably a combination of factors, but I always believed that we'd see a peak in sales in either 2012 or 2013.. even when people were quick to point out that the rate of increase was still pretty constant to last year. The gradual switch to streaming services was inevitable, though I do think this decline will level off for a time and any further decline will be very slow (with reasonably healthy sales maintained) through until the end of this decade at least.

 

Also: I didn't realise Spotify wasn't free. I got it for free in 2009 and have never paid for it since?

The free version of Spotify is restricted (though they no longer limit plays of individual tracks, you're only allowed a certain amount of listening per month). Other streaming sites like Deezer and We7 also work on the so-called "freemium" model.

I've not bothered for the last couple of months because there's simply nothing that I'm interested in buying - simple.

Edited October 28, 201311 yr by seanster

There's Premium and Unlimited versions of Spotify that you have to pay for.

I think the sudden single sales decline is mainly due to the streaming services becoming trendier with each passing month, and the new deals with Spotify and the cell phone companies probably...

but the good thing about this decline is that there are more and more new entries in the top 40 making the Single charts somewhat similar to that of the late 90's, early 00's which is good.

 

I don't think it has to do with the quality of the music, since there are so many great releases the past 2 months and there will be much more before Xmas.