Metal Injection

by: Navjot Kaur Sobti

We’ve been hearing it for years now – the music industry is suffering. The symptoms? Just last year, the industry at large fell 8%, down to approximately $140 billion. Less folks are getting out into the record stores – and from an age where CDS, tapes, vinyls, constituted the way to experience music – going out to the good old record stores to buy and spin music may soon evolve into a modern-day cliché. According the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), a group of specialists who work to collect the hard facts on the music industry (in conjunction with website Digital Music News), the recorded music industry has experienced a 7.2% drop since 2009, which translates to roughly $17 billion; to top that off, radio advertising has shot down 12%, to about $28.7 billion.

Speaking of recession and economic downturn, music instrument sales have also fallen a solid 15.4%, to $14.8 billion (with the slow disappearance of music instruction in schools nationwide as cold-hard evidence of less instruments reaching generations today). While some may blame games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero for deterring their gamers from purchasing and mastering actual instruments, video games have also been hit by the overall decline – decreasing to 47%, an estimated $43.5 billion. Yet, a source of optimism for the music biz remains to save the day (slightly): an observed 4% increase in the global concert business. Good news for the artists, who, despite not being able to ease up on those days jobs just yet, can at least celebrate a recently released slew of new publishing and performance rights. So, ultimately, it seems that with a little cash saved up for CDs (tapes, or vinyls, for those of you who thrive on all levels of old-school), a few more concert tickets bought than our personal norms, we can only fight the decline that seems to plague the world of record music, musical instruments, and the industry by which we were raised, since birth, to drop out, tune in, and rock out. [Digital Insider via Metal Insider]