Articles like this make me wonder though: is it that she and her album are that popular, or is it because music (and album) sales have been somewhat depressed in the past decade largely due to rampant piracy, especially before services like the iTunes store hit critical mass.
There was recently an article stating that "pirates" are actually buying more music than "non-pirates". In Germany, at least. Source
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Nice achievement for Taylor Swift, congratulations!
Because only good music is determined by you. I'm sure you say the same thing to people who don't like the food you like or the cloths, cars, games, computers, hair products...
Her first albums were country she started out as a country singer this one is defiantly more pop-ish. She's cute, catchy tunes, good for her.
or maybe i had to sit through a live concert with my kid
here is an example http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoMF3TsNWFA
Spice girls were pretty big deal back in the day too.
For me, real music is the kind the beats the test of time. Taylor swift isn't that.
---------- Post added 2012-10-31 at 04:36 PM ----------
Also, from the video above, anyone who sounds like a donkey live is not a real singer.
Well, one possible reason would be the increase in the use of convenient online sources for buying music which weren't always in place for the past 10 years. It was easier to download for free than to go out and buy. Now it's probably easier to buy than looking for a pirated copy.
The question is, however, how much music are they buying vs if there was no piracy?
Imagine I am a music lover and there are 10 albums that I want. In the past maybe I could only afford 5. But now with piracy I can buy 5 and download 5. Or maybe buy 3 and download 7.
Now imagine that you like a lot less music. There are 2 albums you want to buy, so you buy them. In this scenario, the person doing the downloading still buys more even though there could still be real losses to the publisher/distributor.
The problem is pretty hard to study though, since behaviors--especially something around a new technology--constantly change.
Here's what I mean: say popular album X released in 2006 would have sold 1.3M under current conditions with the crackdown on file sharing and torrents and the rise of convenient legal networks. But in 2006 they only sold 1.1 M.
I'm not trying to put down this achievement. I just wonder if the comparison to the last 10 years is truly valid or not. I'm more interested from an intellectual, stat-geeky sort of way.
1) this thread is about it so that's why it matters
2) people aren't buying the music, the lyrics or her, they're buying the package because they know someone who bought the package. fame leads to success nowadays, success doesn't lead to fame on the same scale.
---------- Post added 2012-10-31 at 11:53 AM ----------
well she's always had a huge following because of the internet and because of her position to have people market everything she does. she was set up to succeed and it had nothing to do with music.
No, I realised what you meant, but I guess my response was poorly worded. What I want to say is that if piracy had a bigger impact during previous years than today, then logically you would expect album sales to have increased relative to the pre-digital distribution era. Like what you described in your example, but rather the yearly total instead.
However, in fact, total album sales have declined every single year since 2000 (except 2011 where it essentially stayed flat).
Last edited by semaphore; 2012-10-31 at 05:36 PM.
Psh.. Vladimir Vysotsky definitely wins. Especially since everything he did was done under Soviet oppression, as a part of the counter culture. It really is too bad that Russian doesn't translate well into English.. even Tatu had to change their lyrics around to make their albums fluid in both languages.