No Rock And Roll Fun

THE WORLD MARKET - CONSIDERED: As ever, the gap between what the record companies tell you as they smash down your firewall and poke about in your hard drive for illegal mp3s, and what they tell each other as they sit in "Mercedes with heated seats which make you feel you've wet yourself" (as today's FT put it) can be a wide and scary place. Take, for example, the IFPI Recording Industry In Numbers. Obviously not the whole thing, that would be too much knowledge in the hands of a mere consumer, but even the abstracts make interesting reading. Something not mentioned much in the fretting of how poorly the multinationals are doing is the growth of local acts - in France, in 2001, 17 out of the top 20 selling acts were French, and in America, ninety-three out of every hundred records sold were by an American. Across our little blue planet, 67.5% of music bought was locally made - up from 64% in 1997. Maybe the age of the international act is drawing to an end? This seems to be backed up by the figures which show the Top 10 music markets are now buying 84% of all recorded music.
Further backing up the seemingly obvious that DVD has eaten into CD sales at least as much as downloading has, the music video market is described as "soaring" - fifty per cent of these sales on DVD.
While Britain may be falling behind on selling records overseas, there's no let-up in our rate of buying them - in 2001, records bought per head in the UK was the highest anywhere on the planet - four discs for every man, woman and child. Next came Americans. Now, to someone who can't understand the concept of going into a record shop to buy a record (rather than some records), four may seem a bit on the mimsy side. But bearing in mind that my Dad hasn't bought a record since I persuaded him that Isn't Anything by My Bloody Valentine was all I wanted for Christmas, that doesn't sound quite so bad, really...