Here is a 3 1/2 year chart showing CD sales as a percentage of our album sales:
The blue line is the weekly number, while the black line is a moving 3 month average. The trend is certainly clear: CDs, especially in the past year, are declining quickly.
I'm not sure how to reconcile our sales numbers with the results of our recent survey, which showed 45% of respondents to might be interested (18% being "sounds pretty good" or "very interested") in a "CD Club"
Also note that in this survey, only 39% were possibly interested in the streaming membership (as it was explained in survey), while 71.4% were interested in the download membership, which is one reason I'm optimistic about the future.
FYI, the survey had 600 respondents, which is a good enough size to be considered valid.
-john
I think you may need to tease out what they mean by a "CD club." It's probably more about the push aspect of a club than the medium. Personally, I think I'd rather spend ~$10/mo and have a set of (MP3) albums sent to me according to my musical preferences than pay $19/mo and have the run of the shop.
It's a paradox-of-choice thing. I like my eMusic subscription, but each month, aside from a few featured albums that get thrown up at me, I end up spending a lot of time auditioning tracks before I finally make my picks, and that drains me. (At least, it drained me enough to stop doing Staccato. :)
How about this: you set up a program where we get 3-5 albums a month pushed down to us. We pick our favorite of the month, and the overall winners in each category get featured-artist status. Or they get $1 for each individual vote. Just an idea. The Columbia House model isn't nearly as attractive as something more customized.
Posted by: Matt May | May 09, 2008 at 10:38 AM
I just have started the three months download membership.
Why did I choose this?
On e.g. CD Baby you buy cheap MP3's and good CD's for the same (high) price. IMHO a bad concept.
including list of titles, time, artwork (not the standard Magnatune booklet).
But this is not possible with Magnatune, what a pity! Hence I chose this very good alternative.
In case you start offering real CD's one day, I'd sure book some "upgrades"
for some of my downloaded FLAC albums to a real CD.
Like in Last.fm or Amazon you might get my listening preferences and downloaded items to build up a "playlist" or recommendations list. I would appreciate this.
Best regards — and keep on running this wonderful shop! —,
Andreas Lober
Posted by: Andreas Lober | May 18, 2008 at 02:47 AM
What do you think about a booklet sharing place where customers of Magnatune may share PDF or whatever format to give their self-made booklet files to others?
Posted by: Andreas Lober | May 20, 2008 at 02:15 AM