HYPEBOT’S DIGITAL MUSIC WEEK IN REVIEW

– Music sales continue to slide for the year with the kick-off to the holiday buying season doing little to turn things around.  Sales dropped nearly 13 percent year-over-year even though overall music sales levels were healthy during the weekend.  It’s unclear if the Sony BMG rootkit debacle effected sales as many retailers strangely continue to stock the discs despite the recall and others have reported few returns. Black Friday activity boosted sales by nearly 30 percent over the previous week, a typical jump for holiday kickoff, but for the year sales still lag 10 percent behind comparable 2004 levels.

– Indy Music retail is fairing no better than the big box stores with CIMS head Dan VanCleave stating

Peeeee-Youuuuuuuuuu. That was one stinky Thanksgiving sales weekend…I did poll our guys and I found out…there ain’t no hits. The TOP 10 this week sold 1,460,527 less than the TOP 10 last year…Second of all, last year in general was a big one for many CIMS accounts and topping it would be difficult even with hits.

Many of our accounts reported flat to slightly down business…

Read the full Hypebot story here.

– Others see some hope for indy retail as an essential gatekeeper and niche marketer.  Read that Hypebot story here.

– Popular independent Internet radio network Live365 came under compliance scrutiny from RIAA and wrote their several thousand broadcasters that the trade group had, "found a number of stations that are not compliant on the service. If stations continue to operate out of compliance, we will reserve the right to shut them down or otherwise restrict access."

– An Australian judge issued a conditional stay for Kazaa owner Sharman Networks  subject to the installation of better content filters.

– And finally and not surprisingly, more studies are showing that the young  are not learning the habit of actually paying for music.