CD Sales' Coldest Winter: December Numbers Plummeting

As is becoming an annual winter tradition, CD sales are having yet another icy December, with sales down 21.7 percent compared to the first week of December 2007. It's hard to blame this year's slate of releases, as the Top 10 albums are selling better than their counterparts last year. So what's to blame? Most likely the recession: iPods and Wiis aren't selling out like in previous years, either.

While by all accounts the big retailers are being battered on the CD sales front, the season has been slightly better for indie stores, as they've seen only a 8.6 percent decrease in album sales. And there was good news for places like Starbucks and online music stores: sales are actually up 8.7 percent. In fact, the number of digital songs sold this year will top 1 billion. So what does the future hold? Stores are already starting to cut down on the floor space they dedicate to CDs. "DVD, Blu-ray are doing great. The CD, no," said one wholesale exec. "I expect next year that we will be cutting back on our CD buying... we will be buying less of each title."

Related Stories:
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Song Stories

“Helen Wheels”

Paul McCartney | 1973

A rollicking good-time hard rocker, "Helen Wheels" was not about a woman but about Paul McCartney's Land Rover, the anthemic chorus voicing the vehicle's reckless joy as "she" took to the road. The song was added to the U.S. version of Band on the Run but was issued only as a single in McCartney's native U.K. "I like that because it's a British road song and there's not many of those around," said McCartney. "It's always Route 66. But Carlisle? How many songs have got Carlisle in them?"

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