Is the Soundtrack Market In Trouble? A Special Report
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I’ve noticed that the soundtrack market isn’t flourishing anymore like it used to. Is it a lack of good soundtracks or movies? Piracy or digital sales? More and more soundtracks are being released directly through outlets like iTunes and 7digital now, instead of a proper CD release. I’ve also noticed a decline in scores being released from recent movies. Is the soundtrack market dying?According to Nielsen SoundScan, no theatrical soundtracks released since 2004 passed a million sales. Hairspray was the top seller with 803,000 units sold. The signs are looking bad and I fear that 2008, despite the release of some amazing movies like Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Iron Man and The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian might not be as successful for movie soundtracks as we all hope.
What could be disastrous for the soundtrack market is the current writer’s strike. If it doesn’t get resolved soon, the potentially big movies of 2009 will be reduced drastically and without the big movies to promote the soundtracks, how can the market survive? More and more movie soundtracks get released on indie labels instead of big ones like Varese Sarabande and that could mean that soundtracks are getting limited in release time and quantity.
Big movie scores like 300 by Tyler Bates only sold 129,000 in 2007. Pirates of The Caribbean: At World’s End by Hans Zimmer only sold 160,000. Transformers by Steve Jablonsky only sold 162,000. I think we also have do differentiate between movie scores and soundtracks. In layman terms movie scores are the cinematic music in the movies, the instrumental stuff, usually made by a composer and an orchestra. Soundtracks can be a movie score, but a lot of movies don’t get the score released, just a CD with the actual songs from the movie. Spider-Man 3 for example, got both. What is clear is that soundtracks with the actual songs from the movie are outselling the scores by 3:1, maybe more. It is a very worrying trend.
The ones that are selling through the roof are High School Musical and the Hanna Montana series, but these are mostly made of popular songs, and compilations like this are always high up on the sales chart.
Meanwhile, the game industry is the king of soundtracks at the moment. Wires Blog Network reported that the popular Electronic Arts game title Rock Band has sold an astounding 2.5 million tracks digitally. The thing with Rock Band is that the title hugely depends on its song selection, and it’s a game about music, and making it, being creative. The most sold songs are a pack of 3 Metallica songs, Weezer’s “Buddy Holly” and The Knack’s “My Sharona”. Most games have an ‘import songs’ feature so people can practically use any song for the game they are playing. This should be utilized by the executives of the film music divisions of all movie companies. They should market it, maybe even strike deals with game companies so they can sneakily put songs from movies in the games. Like I said in another article, the game market is huge, and it’s killing Hollywood. Join forces before it’s too late! Music sales will go down, but game sales will increase, see the connection here?
Maybe the movie score composers will have to go to the game industry now, more than they used to. Game studios will have increased spending power, meaning bigger soundtracks as well. The movie and the music industry might not afford to follow suit.
Robert Kraft, the president of Fox Music said: “soundtracks are now simply about tie-ins to primarily tween and kids’ movies.” The president of worldwide music for Sony and Columbia Lia Vollack said: “I’m not pessimistic about putting out records. They just can’t cost very much.” The president of music for Paramount Randy Spendlove said: “The soundtrack sales are dependent upon how the music industry solves their problems.” Kathy Nelson, the president of film music for Universal said: “The only way it sells is if the movie is successful. It’s not (like) a band that goes on the road.” All very depressing quotes from the execs.
The next thing could be mobile phone marketing. An example given recently was that your Bluetooth cell phone or Blackberry could prompt you to purchase the soundtrack. I expect the digital releases to increase this year and CD becoming less and less used. Disney released more digital soundtracks than ever before and because of the small cost included, they didn’t have to sell it on an indie label as many movie studios are trying now. Paramount released the soundtrack for Into The Wild on CD, but the score by Michael Brook was only released digitally. Randy Spendlove said: “We’re finding a lot of score junkies that know it’s almost easier for them to go download a score than try to find it in a store.” That may be true Mr. Spendlove, and maybe I’m being sentimental about all this, but I think it’s sad that I can’t have it in my CD rack anymore. I digitalize all my soundtracks to MP3 as soon as I get it for easier access, but I just love having the CD, just to look at the cover art or inside information and the casing.
Some still cling to the old CD luckily, and I really hope that the companies make some steps to increase the sales, especially for scores. Lia Vollack said: “I don’t think scores should only be downloadable. The collectors who go buy every single score: they’re audiophiles. They like the quality of a physical CD.” When it comes to the quality, New Line plans to introduce a new format called AIF which will be priced at $1.99 per track instead of the usual $0.99. It’s a much higher-quality digital format than MP3, but will it succeed? I am not going to buy AIF files. If I am going digital, I am sticking to MP3. The sound quality is not my biggest concern here as all my soundtracks are digitalized to MP3 anyway. Their first release will be The Golden Compass by Alexandre Desplat. I think New Line has made a big mistake here, and they will not get many sales. I just hope they won’t lose too much money so they lose faith in soundtracks. Well, at least it shows that the studios are trying something.
So is the market dead? Not yet it isn’t, and I think it will always be around in some form. Movies need to be made, and you can’t have movies without music, well there are exceptions like Cloverfield who had only one cue bade in the end credits by Michael Giacchino, but I don’t think Hans Zimmer, John Williams, Brian Tyler, Mark Isham, Trevor Rabin or Steve Jablonsky will be out of a job just yet. It remains clear however that the film music studio execs have a lot to do in the coming months and years.
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Comments
Well, it used to be a really profitable market. According to Billboard Magazine, the score to Titanic for example sold about 10 million copies. City Of Angels 50% score/50% songs sold 5.1 million copies. To be fair, Titanic was an exception, to be fair, but even my sister bought scores back in the day. She bought the Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves score, my neighbor bought scores because when you went to the music shop, they had a huge selection, but look at it now.
I think when you look at the trend of soundtracks, even Charlie’s Angels sold 1.3 million copies and that was deemed a huge disappointment. Armageddon (the soundtrack, not the score) sold about 4 million copies. Consider Hairspray, the biggest seller in 2007 with not even a million copies and you can see the trend quite clearly. It’s true like you say, the scores have never been a huge seller, but I would argue that a typical score now is selling maybe 3-5 times less than 8-10 years ago and for a market with already low sales, that is a huge impact. Top 10 for sales isn’t what it used to be, but it will be interesting to see the sales numbers
The CD is dying as a medium unfortunately. It’s easier to buy digitally anyway (those lazy kids!). I think that it’s just a matter of time before scores are only sold digitally if at all. Maybe the future will be full of bootlegs, ripped dvd scores, run by the real soundtrack geeks. Either way, it’s a worrying trend…
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Was there ever really much of a market for scores? Has there ever been a platinum selling movie score album (the only one I can think of that might have been is Chariots of Fire, and that was over 25 years ago). Soundtracks dominated the music charts for much of the late 90s/early 00s, but I too have noticed that trend flagging. Obviously, CD sales in general have been affected greatly by digital music, so it makes sense that movie soundtracks dominated by “singles” are not released, as people can buy single songs for 99 cents anywhere they please, making the need/usage of compilations all but moot.
My guess is that scores weren’t selling much before, and still aren’t selling much, but soundtracks just aren’t being released unless they are original music and/or hard to find music and/or unique (Garden State fits a couple of those criteria). Also, don’t forget that the Juno soundtrack currently sits in the top 10 for CD sales and will almost definitely sell > one million copies.
Finally - I’m like you as well when it comes to CDs vs. digital music. I have about 600 CDs, almost all of which are on my iPod, but I still barely buy digital music. I like have the tangible CD, and I like my bookshelf that was built with storing them in mind. I’ve bought probably less than 50 songs from iTunes, and most of the ones I did were with a gift card…