MUSIC BIZ NEWS ROUND-UP: SALES ARE UP, BYE-BYE BEST BUY, AND WAS TAPE TRADING PIRACY?

Why am I lumping all this miscellaneous news about the state of the music industry into one column? I don’t know, just shut up and read it:

• Good news via Metal Insider: According to the RIAA, the music industry enjoyed its first increase in revenue in SEVEN YEARS in 2011. Wow. The increase was only 0.2%, but the industry still made more than $7 billion overall, so, yeah, not too shabby.

• Not surprising news via Deadline: Best Buy “will close 50 of its big box stores in the U.S… and remodel others to emphasise phone, video, and broadband services.” They’re also opening 100 more of the mini Best Buy Mobile stores, and could have up to 800 of those adorable lil’ things by 2016. This means options for purchasing physical media in stores will be even scarcer than they already are, which could be a major blow to AC/DC fans, KISS fans, and a few dozen Guns N’ Roses fans. Seriously, I don’t know who didn’t see this coming. The shelf space allotted to CDs and DVDs at Best Buy has been shrinking and shrinking for years now. There is obviously not much money being made here. The good news is, if you do still want to purchase physical media, it’s really not that hard to order shit via the internet.
• And finally, an interesting editorial sent in to us by MetalSucks super-tipster Hetal Bhatt, in which Metal Illuminati asks, “Wasn’t tape trading also ‘piracy?’” They make some really good points, but the flaw in their argument, I think, is that when people talk about “piracy,” they’re not really talking about young underground bands. I think there’s definitely a comparison to be made between tape trading and releasing free music on Bandcamp, but “piracy” would be more akin to when your friend made you a cassette of the new Anthrax album (or whatever) because you were either too broke or too cheap to buy a copy. Cannibal Corpse really do not need your help promoting their music by giving away free copies of their album, y’know?

-AR