85% of 2008’s Music Went Unsold

In a rather bleak display of numbers, a study of digital music sales reported that 10 million of the 13 million tracks released during 2008 did not sell (with only 173,000 of 1.23 million albums selling), meaning that only 15 percent of this year’s available music was able to do any business.

In a rather bleak display of numbers, a study of digital music sales reported that 10 million of the 13 million tracks released during 2008 did not sell (with only 173,000 of 1.23 million albums selling), meaning that only 15 percent of this year’s available music was able to do any business.

This study disproves the theory of “niche marketing,” which was heavily touted by author Chris Anderson in his 2006 book The Long Tail. The basic premise of the book predicted that digital music sales would switch from being primarily big hits to a majority of small, “niches in the tail.”

2008 showed that there is still only one important “niche” in music sales-huge, mainstream hits-80 percent of the tracks sold in 2008 came from only 52,000 songs.

Will Page of the MCPS-PRS Alliance and Andrew Bud of mBlox conducted the study. Anderson is waiting for Page and Bud to release their sources before he considers changing his theory.

“I think people believed in a fat, fertile long tail because they wanted it to be true,” said Mr Bud. “The statistical theories used to justify that theory were intelligent and plausible. But they turned out to be wrong. The data tells a quite different story. For the first time, we know what the true demand for digital music looks like.”

Regardless of whether or not 2008 is the sign of a trend in digital music sales, these numbers should certainly spark a dialogue about a potentially dynamic industry that may just want to stay the same.