Music News Bulletin - 03/12/08

Digital Growth Won’t Stop Overall Music Sales From Shrinking, According To Forecast 02 Dec 2008
"US digital music sales will grow by 17 percent per year on average over the next five years, to make up 41 percent of sales by 2013, Forrester’s latest Jupiterresearch forecast says. But that won’t stop overall sales shrinking by 0.8 percent per year on average from $10.2 billion to $9.8 billion. Citing sticking points in the digital world and an acceleration in CDs’ decline, Forrester revised its forecast from a 7.1 percent annual drop to 8.7 percent following poor 2007 CD sales." [PaidContent]

Surveying the landscape of a changed industry 03/12/08
"While two B.C. festivals celebrate film and music, players behind the scenes thrash out how their businesses can survive

Seymour Stein is a legend. The 65-year-old New Yorker is attending Transmission as a keynote speaker. Now a vice-president at Warner Bros., he founded Sire Records in 1966. The many bands he has signed over the years include the Ramones, Talking Heads, the Pretenders and the Smiths. In the 1980s, stuck in hospital with an infection, he still managed to sign Madonna - feeling less than presentable, the story goes, he called his barber to come in and spruce him up, before she visited him and agreed to the deal.

Stein says the rot set in the music industry 60 years ago. "We blew it," he says on the phone from his office in New York. "The first major music labels were all phonograph manufacturers, but by the time the Beatles came along, most companies were no longer involved in the hardware." [GlobeAndMail]