What's the future of the music industry?

Yeah I wasn't even mentioning stuff like Taylor Swift's 1989 and Kanye West's College Dropout. Lol the UK chart though. The Canadian chart is a similar story - the compilations appear even higher with Queen at 20, ABBA at 30, more Shania Twain and Tragically Hip, less Skynyrd and George Strait, Appetite instead of a GH but yeah. Is this just because when they count streaming numbers, they effectively count the equivalent of every time someone put on a classic rock station or spun their copy of Rumours in 92?

Wow - Taylor has seven albums on the BB 200

The two Queen comps in the '92 list were there because they were technically new releases put together to launch Hollywood Records' reissue campaign of the Queen catalogue, and were gifted extra commercial legs by the release of Wayne's World and the related single rerelease of "Bohemian Rhapsody".

Regular catalogue albums like Rumours etc. were ineligible for the Top 200 unless they received a new reissue. This stood until the industry cratered enough that they let any catalogue release in just to make #'s and not have like some SoundCloud dude who pushed 500 units chartbust.

All those albums cited in the new chart are doing the business on vinyl in big box stores.

Ah, that's more context.

My loose thoughts: they really should just have a heritage chart at this stage

Disgraced UKIP boosting DJ Mike Read is on the case! https://www.heritagechart.co.uk/

U Music chief sez he's not down with the status quo: https://variety.com/2023/music/news/universal-music-lucian-grainge-slams-streaming-economy-spotify-1235486063/

Obv I wouldn't trust him to make a magically better model that reduces his business's share, but at least he's not saying he has one, and it's good to see this on the record.

Billboard article making the case that the album remains strong: https://www.billboard.com/pro/album-format-dead-narrative-music-discovery-tiktok-singles/

hmm paywall

Weird, I didn’t hit it – try this?

that'll do it, thanks!

Interesting article - thanks for sharing

UMG "calls time out" on TikTok: https://www.universalmusic.com/an-open-letter-to-the-artist-and-songwriter-community-why-we-must-call-time-out-on-tiktok/

Yeah this isn't surprising

https://variety.com/2024/music/news/hipgnosis-songs-takeover-by-concord-1235974846/