Holiday Albums: A Gift for the Record Labels

[Miguel]

Businessweek:
Holiday Albums: A Gift for the Record Labels
By Andy Fixmer on November 01, 2012

...Santa’s sack will be overflowing with music this year because holiday discs have become the closest thing to a sure bet for labels and artists. The majority of albums contain vintage standards such as Jingle Bells and The First Noel that are in the public domain, combined with a few copyrighted hits like Winter Wonderland or Let It Snow, and one or two new pieces of music. That formula keeps costs low and ensures audiences will be familiar with a majority of the songs, says David Bakula, an analyst at Nielsen (NLSN) SoundScan. Best of all for an industry that’s suffered years of declining CD sales, consumers remain eager to buy. That’s why every music label wants to have a holiday album, Bakula says.

Retailers such as Target (TGT) and Best Buy (BBY), hoping to keep customers in the holiday shopping mood, place the CDs in prime displays at the end of aisles during the Christmas season, raising awareness without the need for much advertising. As a percentage of the record industry’s total sales, holiday CDs have represented a bigger slice each of the last four years; in 2011 the industry sold 13.9 million holiday albums, 4.2 percent of the 330.6 million total discs sold that year, according to SoundScan. The genre has another draw for record labels: “Holiday albums tend not to be very popular on file-sharing sites,” explains Eric Garland, co-founder of music researcher BigChampagne and senior vice president at Live Nation Entertainment (LYV). “For that reason, they’ve never been as widely pirated.”

...It’s not just pop groups and mellow crooners who profit from the holiday vibe. Even hipster acts have gotten into the spirit: Last year’s A Very She & Him Christmas from M. Ward and Zooey Deschanel sold almost 300,000 albums, according to SoundScan. And on Nov. 13 indie rocker Sufjan Stevens will release Silver & Gold, a five-disc box set, for $40.

For 2010 American Idol winner Scott McCreery, who released his first album a year ago and is working on a new record for 2013, a holiday album will act as a bridge between releases to keep his fan base engaged. His Christmas With Scotty McCreery, recorded this summer in a studio bedecked with holiday decorations, hit stores last month. Explains Bakula: “It’s smart marketing and giving consumers what they are willing to buy.”

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/201...ord-labels

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Album sales in general this holiday season...
Billboard, December 30:

Holiday-Season Album Sales Have the No-Buble Blues

In the absence of a steady-selling blockbuster title like Adele's "21" or Michael Buble's "Christmas," 2012's holiday music sales were down compared to last year.

Comparing weeks 46-51 of this calendar year (Nov. 18 - Dec. 23) with the same period last year, unit sales were down 10% to 54.9 million in 2012, versus the 61 million copies scanned last year. Within that, digital album sales were up 5.3% to nearly 15 million units, from 14.2 million last year, while CD sales are down 15.4% to 39 million units from 46.1 million copies in 2011.

Some may find a little solace in the fact that last year's 51st week included Dec. 24 -- one of the biggest shopping days of the year -- and this year's SoundScan calendar did not, which should produce a larger 52nd week than last year's. But will that be big enough to make up this year's shortfall? If other factors are an indicator, the answer is: not likely.

For example, last year, Drake's "Take Care," Michael Buble's "Christmas," Nickelback's "Here And Now;" the Black Keys' "El Camino," Adele's "21," Young Jeezy's "TM 103: Hustler Ambition" and Justin Bieber's "Under The Mistletoe" produced weekly sales of over 200,000 units 12 different times during the holiday, including three weeks in which the Buble title produced sales of over 400,000 units and one week where the Drake title did over 600,000 units.

In contrast, this year albums exceeding 200,000 units in weekly sales happened just four times: One Direction's "Take Me Home," which scored 540,000 units, Taylor Swift's "Red," which topped the 200,000 unit mark twice during the holiday selling season and Rihanna's "Unapologetic," which sold 238,000 the week of Black Friday.

Another disconcerting sign: 12.7 million units scanned during the week ended Dec. 23 was the biggest album sales week for the holidays -- down from 15 million units last year. Meanwhile, the biggest week last year for digital-track sales was 38.2 million units, versus 25.5 million units this year, a 33% drop.

http://www.billboard.com/news/holiday-se...3172.story