CDs Sales Continue to Decline

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ccording to a story on the BBC, sales of compact discs have continued their demise, with sales for the first three months of 2011 dropping by 25% from the same months in 2011.

Meanwhile, sales of digital downloads have climbed, yet people in the industry continue to be in denial about the demise of CDs.

"It's a worry the products we're selling are perceived as possibly outdated," said General Kim Bayley, director of the Entertainment Retailers Association in the BBC piece. "So we do need to update the product."

What entertainment industry types don’t seem to realize is that the products they sell aren’t merely perceived as outdated, they are in fact outdated. The people in the music biz just can’t accept that fact.

And so they are trying various things to make CDs more desirable. Mostly these involve more elaborate packaging, and a tiered marketing strategy that involves issuing everything in two or three editions: a single disk, a double-disk “deluxe” edition, and often, a muti-disk box set addition that includes lots of frivolous tchotchkes.

The problem with this strategy, of course, is that all these editions or more expensive, whereas digital downloads are succeeding precisely because they are less expensive, which is why the record industry is so unwilling to accept the inevitable dominance of downloaded music.

Those who continue to maintain that illegal downloading is killing the music industry need to take note. This is yet another example of the cluelessness of the music biz, and the very active roll it plays in its own demise.