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Last Year, 85% of Online Albums Never Sold, Study Says

by Lee Bains on December 24, 2008 at 08:04 AM




A study performed by the MCPS-PRS Alliance, a non-profit royalty collection service, has found that only 15 percent of the albums hosted online last year sold as much as a single copy.

This report flies in the face of author Chris Anderson's popular "long tail" theory, which states that Internet music sales depend more upon niche artists than MTV-style chart-toppers. The MSPS-PRS study found that, contrary to Anderson's theory and the hopes of many in the indie world, those older retail theories still hold up online, an Internet music store needing hits to turn a profit.

Last year, the study shows, 80 percent of all online music revenue came from the sales of a mere 52,000 songs, a sliver of the 13 million available. These figures line up with the traditional "80/20" rule, suggesting that 80 percent of all revenue is generated by the most popular 20 percent of products.

Will Page, who headed up the study, remarked, "The relative size of the dormant 'zero sellers' tail was truly jaw-dropping." In 2008, more than 10 million songs were not purchased so much as once. [From: The Daily Mail]

Tags: digital music, DigitalMusic, MP3s, music, online music, OnlineMusic, retail, shopping, studies, top

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