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'Dramatic' Growth in Digital Music Sales Due to The Beatles on iTunes?

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nielsen_may11_digital_sales.jpg

Media research firm Nielsen yesterday revealed that overall music sales in the United States are up 1.6% year-over-year so far in 2011, driven in large part by a 12.4% surge in digital music sales that appears to coincide with the debut of The Beatles on iTunes last November.
While physical albums saw a decline in year-over-year sales from the same period in 2010, digital album and track purchases went up 16.8 percent and 9.6 percent, respectively. Digital retailers received more than half of all music transactions, propelling a 12.4 percent growth in sales over last year.

Catalog album sales are up 5.4 percent in 2011, thanks in part to a long-awaited 2010 deal allowing digital distribution of The Beatles' albums for the first time.
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As noted by All Things Digital, however, it seems hard to believe that The Beatles are responsible for the continued bump in digital sales still being seen six months after the group's iTunes debut. Regardless, music executives are undoubtedly happy that music sales are at least holding steady after what has been an extended decline in overall sales and a flattening out of digital sales, although it will obviously take some time to determine if this is a true shift in sales momentum or simply a brief respite.

Article Link: 'Dramatic' Growth in Digital Music Sales Due to The Beatles on iTunes?
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2011/05/12/dramatic-growth-in-digital-music-sales-due-to-the-beatles-on-itunes/
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Perhaps with the beatles on itunes it encouraged people to download music from there for the first time (like maybe older people), who then went on to download other music on there which helped the figures?
 
A Day You Will Never Forget

To all the haters :p

Great news...I'm happy for the Beatles!
 
I'm gonna go with coincidence. I'm sure Apple made money off the Beatles, but not enough to affect a trend.
 
dustinsc said:
I'm gonna go with coincidence. I'm sure Apple made money off the Beatles, but not enough to affect a trend.
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I don't know...Huge Apple Beatles bilboards were up all over San Francisco (the front page pic on Apple's site from before)....with the big bold phrase, "Now On iTunes"....Pretty dramatic if you ask me....Consider the hundreds and thousands of drivers crossing the bay bridge exposed to that ad.

I've never seen Apple press that much marketing into a specific artist with iTunes. I think the adverts worked and payed off big time.
 
davie18 said:
Perhaps with the beatles on itunes it encouraged people to download music from there for the first time (like maybe older people), who then went on to download other music on there which helped the figures?
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Exactly. They looked into the store to buy their Beatles tunes, and then realized "Holy Hell! Everything I EVER liked is here!" and the rest is history. Also, there actually HAS been some catchy music coming out that is about more than angst, guns, and hos, so people are willing to actually pay.
 
Kaibelf said:
Exactly. They looked into the store to buy their Beatles tunes, and then realized "Holy Hell! Everything I EVER liked is here!" and the rest is history. Also, there actually HAS been some catchy music coming out that is about more than angst, guns, and hos, so people are willing to actually pay.
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Yea, this is what I think happened as well. Once people got the hook into the iTunes store, like you said, the rest is history.
 
Kaibelf said:
Exactly. They looked into the store to buy their Beatles tunes, and then realized "Holy Hell! Everything I EVER liked is here!" and the rest is history. Also, there actually HAS been some catchy music coming out that is about more than angst, guns, and hos, so people are willing to actually pay.
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Echoes my sentiment. I imagine the introduction of the Beatles onto iTunes created a sudden iTunes-is-now-relevant-to-my-interests moment for a lot of people who normally would avoid it.
 
Give me a break, we had half a century to buy their music. If it's really due to them, then today's musicians are below Lady Gagagagaga's bieber.
 
it seems hard to believe that The Beatles are responsible for the continued bump in digital sales still being seen six months after the group's iTunes debut.
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Agree. Beatles claim needs to be substantiated with further data. e.g. (1) was the purchase of a Beatles song followed by other purchases that differ from a users typical buying activity. (2) what percentage of total sales were represented by Beatles purchases.

Not an exhaustive list, but data along these lines would be helpful. Let's not forget that Polio was thought to be caused by ice cream, because incidences rose during the summer, as did the sale of ice cream (http://www.thinktwice.com/Polio.pdf)! Coincidence is not sufficient to establish causality.
 
Are we sure it wasn't Bieber?

MacRumors said:
[...] a 12.4% surge in digital music sales that appears to coincide with the debut of The Beatles on iTunes last November. [...]
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Could have been due to Bieber as well. A quick Google shows that he released an album on 11/22 last year.

Beiber is, after all, the most popular Jonas Brother. Right?
 
Coincidental correlation that's all it is. IMHO, because of the delay in Apple obtaining rights the greater bulk of Beatles fans already had either gotten the albums illegally or ripped their personal cd's. Until we see some actual iTunes Beatles sales numbers its just speculation.
 
Wait! Aren't the record companies going to blame this sales trend on the pirates? After all, they blamed every other trend in sales on the pirates.
 
No other convenient option

Has anyone tried to buy a CD recently. Best Buy, Target, and Walmart all have abysmal selections. More "Latino" music than classical and jazz combined. I believe the closing of stores like Tower Records and Wherehouse Records, etc along with the continued emasculation of brick and mortar music selections have contributed to increase in online music sales.
 
deadkennedy said:
Give me a break, we had half a century to buy their music. If it's really due to them, then today's musicians are below Lady Gagagagaga's bieber.
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Believe it or not there is some good music out there today (as well as good stuff of yesterday like oh...the Deadkennedys) and some of it is even on itunes. ;) Still outnumbered by the Beibers dammit. :mad:
 
They'd better make some profit on it... They supposedly spend a lot and gave in to several demands to get them on the store...

But I find it hard to believe that this alone caused the spike...
 
Can't be true

This cannot be true because we had it on good authority from some users on mac rumors that the Beatles were 'washed-up has-beens from 50years ago that no-one cares about anymore'.

I really believed them as they're the same types who were so accurate about the iPhone and iPad 'fails'.

It's comforting to know the world has so many geniuses....with computer access.:rolleyes:
 
Lol

um, sorry to break it to you older folks, but you are dreaming. the fact that the current AND catalog sales both showed the same trend makes it obvious that something else caused this. unless a bunch of nursing homes suddenly got iTunes access, the Beatles theory doesn't hold.
 
This amazes me

I find this amazing. I've had a lot of Beatles CDs for years and I ripped them into iTunes eons ago.

Does this mean a whole new generation that doesn't understand CDs has discovered the Fab Four or are most people too, uh..., uniformed to just rip the CDs that they already own?
 
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