Announcing our new Revolver Digital Store, in collaboration with Friend For Music!
As part of our longstanding commitment to music, we have always been at the forefront of new developments in the industry.
Be it Direct Metal Mastering and releasing music on the (then-new) CD format in the 1980s or our support of the first mass market music services in the early 2000s. Today, we continue to release CDs and make increasing amounts of our catalogue available for instant purchase or via one of the many streaming services, satisfying the shifting customer demand we have witnessed over the past decade.
Like many other indie labels, we have no illusions as to the state of the music industry – whilst revenues began to decline in the 1990s, that decline has no doubt been accelerated by the widespread availability of copyrighted music via the Internet. For all the inches of copy, coverage and layoffs in the “Big Four” labels, it has directly hurt independent labels to a far greater extent. And not only that, but artists have felt the pinch too – for labels releasing new material, it’s more important than ever to preserve the integrity of a release prior to its full release whilst still offering promotional copies to radio stations, journalists and selected individuals.
As you may have seen on Hypebot or NME.com this week, the BPI’s final summary of 2009 music industry figures have been released and it’s ‘a mixed bag.’
The gory details:
* Total UK recorded music trade income rises 1.4% overall to £928.8m
* Trade revenues from physical formats down 6.1% to £739.9m
* Digital income now a fifth of total recorded music revenues – up 47.8% to £188.9m
The main observation: digital sales have offset the losses accrued in physical sales, leaving not a very large margin of growth at all. Forrester Research usually provide their insight into BPI stats and figures, and once again they’re on hand for an expert opinion…
Following on from our Gogoyoko deal earlier this year, we’re now pushing ahead with new agreements with MediaNet (suppliers to many of the highstreet digital stores and Tesco Digital, amongst others), HDTracks (a specialist vendor with a heavy focus on High Definition audio and 24bit/96kHz high resolution recordings) and LoudTrax – a rock and metal specialist. (Their list of subgenres is incredible!)