You may or may not remember the band Cake, best known for a pair of novelty hits at the end of the ‘90s. But apparently someone does. The group’s latest album, Showroom of Compassion—released ten years after their last charting single (“Short Skirt, Long Jacket” got to 124 on the top 200) and 13 years since anyone thought they were relevant—hit number one on the Billboard charts last week. It was far from an impressive accomplishment, however: at just 44,000 units sold, Cake’s sixth album was the lowest-selling number one since the advent of SoundScan in 1991.
This means far more for the music industry than it does for Cake, who probably shouldn’t take this achievement as a sign of resurgent popularity (the album’s sales dropped by 67 percent between weeks one and two, the largest drop for a number one since 2006). The industry, however, can see this as the biggest nail in a coffin over ten years in the making. With total sales nearly halving between 1999 and 2009 according to the Recording Industry Association of America, 44,000 units for a number one looks less like the bottom of the valley and more like a sign on the side of a cliff.
The longstanding wisdom in the music community is that piracy was at the root of the decreased sales in the past ten years. The RIAA continues to uphold this mentality—in a 2010 industry roundup, the organization claimed that “only 37 percent of music acquired by U.S. consumers … was paid for.” Obviously the illegal procurement of music hasn’t helped the industry, but the drama between record labels and the Internet has been covered from angles both pro-industry and pro-piracy. (A popular argument is that labels brought piracy upon themselves. They should have embraced and monetized Napster instead of resisting digital music out of hand, claim critics, who believe that this set a precedent for music to be free on the Internet. This argument, though insightful with respect to piracy’s development, seems to downplay the criminality of filesharing).
All of this, though, seems a little dated—when was the last time you illegally downloaded a song or an album? If your answer was “a while ago,” you’re not alone: a survey in The Guardian shows filesharing among teenagers dropping from 42 percent in 2007 to 26 percent in 2009. Well-known downloading sites like KaZaa, Limewire, and the Pirate Bay have either been shut down or remodeled as for-pay sites (or both), and although scouring the Internet for Rapidshare links can occasionally lead to success, the only comprehensive piracy sites are invite-only communities full of music nerds. These communities, which are notoriously hard to gain access to, consist largely of people who pay for music anyway. The kind of piracy that put the industry in the hole of old is moving outside the mainstream, but sales remain down.
Where are the listeners then? According to Edison Research’s 2010 American Youth Study, they’ve shifted to other, more legal sources for the free music labels taught them to expect. Pandora alone is used by 20 percent of 12-24 -year-olds, while 31 percent of the same age group report that they discover new music on YouTube. The Guardian survey further supports this idea, saying that 65 percent of teenagers stream music regularly. These streaming services have been ignored by the RIAA, but the increased use of computers and, most importantly, the prevalence of smart phones, have made these services the primary method of consumption for many listeners.
With new consumption patterns, data and figures look different. “Sales” are falling for pop albums and singles because listeners are streaming “Grenade” instead of buying Bruno Mars’ debut. This form of listening has been monetized—Pandora pays steeper royalties than terrestrial radio, and YouTube, too, pays royalties to labels—but it stays off the charts, and presumably leads to less revenue than traditional sales. Meanwhile, “smaller” albums are ranking higher in sales charts, as the devoted fans of older or independent acts come out to support the artist in the traditional way.
This has led to numerous unusual chart occurrences in addition to Cake’s number one. Indie preach-rockers Arcade Fire and Manhattan yacht-poppers Vampire Weekend both managed to take the number one spot in the less-crowded 2010 field, while Brooklyn mopesters The National and Zooey Deschanel vanity project She & Him found themselves in the top ten. In fact, nearly half of the independent albums to reach number one (since 1991) were released in the past three years. Although these groups’ chart success points towards no significant change in mainstream taste, it could lead to one. If major labels cannot figure out how to appropriately monetize the way that contemporary listeners hear music, independent labels might be all we have left.
Excellent article Matt.