You want music? Just download it. It’s been the most popular way of getting music since the early 2000s. Now, that might be changing.
In 2013, digital purchases fell. Digital songs fell 4.4%, according to Nielsen Sound Scan. Digital albums fell 2.1%. When this year began, people were buying as many as 25 million digital songs a week. By November, they weren’t even buying 20 million a week. Digital albums did a little better. They started the year steady, buy now, albums are losing steam. That’s where the two percent decline comes in. The number one digital selling song this year has been Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines”. But that is 200,000 sales behind 2012’s best digital seller, Gotye’s “Somebody I Used to Know”.
We could blame consumer trends. We could blame technological trends. I know some will. But I think we should put the downfall where it lies: the musicians themselves, especially the most popular ones of today. How about they start making better music? People criticize my generation, late 1980s and 1990s,? for producing music that was dark, vulgar and offensive, but at least they were creative! Now all I hear is the same cookie cutter songs, the same cookie cutter beats, cookie cutter melodies, cookie cutter lyrics, cookie cutter messages. People are eventually going to get tired of that. What do you think could be done to bring digital sales back up?