I have to own-up; I didn’t know that 50 Cent’s ‘Get Rich or Die Tryin’ is expected to be the biggest-selling album of the year. The question taxing the record industry is how many people will pay to listen to it rather than download a free pirated version from the Internet.
As the record industry despairs at the loss of profit due to people downloading MP3 versions of the music there is one ray of hope. Older people either don’t want to, or cannot, download music and would prefer to pay for new releases from the likes of Ms. Streisand and the Eagles. A representative from Columbia Records said, "We feel like we're losing less sales to file sharing(MP3) on albums by older artists, as well as those by younger artists who appeal to baby boomers".
In the same week last year, artists over the age of 40, like Bette Midler, Van Morrison, Michael McDonald and Simon and Garfunkel, held 11 of the top 50 spots in the Billboard chart. In 2002, shoppers over the age of 40 bought more than 35% of all music recordings.
Ten years ago, they accounted for 23% of sales.
From a marketing perspective this is an interesting issue of how technology acts as a sales barrier (in this case a positive one) and further evidence of older consumers generating significant levels of demand.
What surprises me is that last week the BBC featured an item about Virgin Records who had stopped stocking many older artists and groups. Perhaps they should look to the evidence from the US.
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