eMusic says 72% of sales are albums

Posted on September 17th, 2009 by admin

Whereas single track sales account for the great majority of iTunes sales, perhaps more than 80 percent, at least one digital music retailer is having better luck pushing albums. What’s the key to the number three online music store’s success?

eMusic has announced that over the past year full album downloads accounted for 72% of its sales with single track sales accounting for the remainder, 28%. Further, with the the introduction of album pricing in July 2009, which reduces prices on selected albums, album sales have risen to 75% of total sales.

“While Apple and their major label suppliers continue to figure out how to make albums more appealing to music buyers, eMusic customers already purchase more albums than single tracks,” said Danny Stein, eMusic President and CEO. “Although the majority of our customers are over the age of 25, we encourage them to buy more music with subscription and album pricing and more musical context than any other service.”

eMusic states that it has consistently delivered more complete title sales with full albums accounting for an average of about 69% of total sales worldwide since 2006.

What’s their secret sauce?

eMusic is focussed on three areas which have helped it to deliver such a high proportion of album sales: 1.) classical, 2.) jazz and 3.) popular music catalog, as exemplified by a deal the online music retailer signed with Sony covering music that’s been on the market at least two years.

Of course, Jazz and Classical are both highly mature genres built around large, complete works well suited to the album and compilation formats.

Lastly, and I’ve been recommending this for years, go to eMusic (affiliate link) and sign up for their 25 free song offer — it’s easy to sign up and just as easy to quit (once you’ve got your music).

Other recent music posts:
— Free on iTunes for Sept 15 through Sept 21
— Mac software: Top 10 best iTunes plugins and add-ons
— iTunes 9: What’s hot, not and new
— iTunes, Target partner on new releases, Pearl Jam ‘Backspacer’ first in queue

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