Economist on the music industry

An interesting status report on the music industry from the Economist.

Here is a teaser:

In a sense, the recorded-music market is not so much dying as greying. In 2002 people aged 12 to 19 accounted for 16.4% of all spending on albums in Britain, according to TNS Worldpanel. That was almost double the share of people aged 60 or over (8.8%). The two groups have now switched positions. By 2008 teenagers accounted for just 12% of spending on albums, whether digital or physical. By contrast, the older fans’ share had gone up to 13.8%. The over-60s do not just spend more on music albums than teenagers. They spend more on pop-music albums.

The consequences can be seen in the pop charts. America’s bestselling album since 2000 is “1”, a collection of Beatles hits from the 1960s. At one point last year four of the top ten albums in Britain were Beatles recordings and the number-one album was a collection of songs by Vera Lynn, who was then 92 years old. The bestselling album worldwide last year was “I Dreamed a Dream” by Susan Boyle, a middle-aged Scot. Universal Music’s bestselling album in Japan in the first half of this year was “Vocalist 4” by Hideaki Tokunaga, Japan’s answer to Harry Connick Jr. If most of your fans are middle-aged, CD sales are holding up well.

Via Marginal Revolution