I work in one of the oldest & largest (in terms of inventory) CD & vinyl retailers in the NY/NJ metro area. By today's standards, we're considered more of a 'niche speciality' shop because that's how foreign buying physical music is to people. My older co-workers remember the period from 1980's through the early noughties where new music releases were considered EVENTS (think of Britney/boyband/teen pop explosion in USA and A BEST vs. DISTANCE in Japan).
People are just on a different level of consumption now.
Personally, I don't think physical sales or even legal downloads are the be-all, end-all predictor of popularity or relevance. I've seen J-pop fans claim that Japanese fans are less likely to download illegally, but I've seen no evidence of Japanese consumers being staunch advocates of anti-piracy, and I bet they'd be less likely overall to admit they were illegally downloading music due to the shame they'd feel for taking part in that.
'Pop music' is undoubtedly suffering the most in terms of physical sales. An overwhelming majority of our clientele seem to be fans of independent rock music and/or over 35 years old, a demographic for whatever reason that seems to still appreciate tangible music. With the exception of 1D—the supposed 'big names' in pop like Beyonce, Timberlake, Gaga, Lea Michele, Rihanna would be considered total flops if you just went by the physical sales from our shop (and we
are doing quite well, thanks to 'hipsters' and the revival of vinyl).
Studies have actually shown that people are now listening to
more music than ever before, but the democratization of music has changed a lot of things—for instance, from this HuffPo article:
Quote:
Music marketing and promotion is simply giving music to media outlets in hopes that they play it, talk about it or write about it. In the old days, there were three main media outlets that provided the general population a way to discover music en masse: commercial radio, TV (i.e., MTV, VH1, BET) and print magazines like Rolling Stone.
These three media outlets created a second subjective filter as they decided which music videos to show, albums to write about or singles to play on the radio from a limited pool of artists promoted to them via the labels. If an artist was not on a label, the possibility of getting exposure from any of these three outlets was virtually impossible -- MTV in particular.
Just getting pitched to any three of these media outlets also required a label due to the costs (i.e., making a video, greasing the palms of the programming directors at commercial radio stations, hiring a publicist, etc.) and connections.
Once again, enter the digital age. The Internet has created new media outlets and given everyone global access. Commercial radio is being replaced by Internet based recommendation streaming radio stations like LastFM that let all music in for programming, not just music pushed from the labels. MTV (when they actually played music videos and nothing was being pimped out, dated or real world-ed) has been replaced by sites like YouTube. All anyone needs now is a cell phone to make their own video and broadcast to a potential Internet viewing audience of hundreds of millions. Print magazines have been replaced by MP3 blogs like Stereogum, Gorilla Vs. Bear, PitchforkMedia, My Old Kentucky Blog and many others. These, combined with social networking sites like iLike, MySpace and more, have limitless circulation and the ability to allow readers and users to form a community that listens to, shares, rates, comments on and in some cases, even buys music. Everyone can become their own commercial radio station, magazine and/or TV network, reaching tens of millions of people.
With the restrictions of the physical world removed sites like iTunes have new vehicles allowing people to discover and share free music (make sure to snag a copy of 34 Stars, a 34-artist compilation album available for free download on iTunes
Subjectivity and filters have been removed. All music can be discovered, downloaded, shared, promoted, heard and bought directly by the audience itself. It is truly the democratization of an industry.
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And this article is only from 2008. The democratization is occurring on an even larger scale now. I can't speak for Japan, but I think it's a huge problem in that the current media consumption landscape doesn't seem to allow for a canon. A few acquaintances of mine and I were discussing Beyonce the other day and her massive 'popularity' and 'cultural relevance' but we couldn't hum the melody of any of her current songs and noted how incredibly weak her back catalog is, or rather,
seems to be.