Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter III was the best-selling album of last year, a year in which total album sales fell 14 percent as consumers continued to buy single songs online, such as top-seller Bleeding Love by Leona Lewis.
Total US music purchases rose 11 percent last year to 1.51 billion units, driven by online spending. Album sales fell to 428.4 million from 500.5 million a year earlier, researcher Nielsen SoundScan said yesterday in an e-mailed statement.
ONLINE SALES
Online sales of individual tracks from stores such as Apple Inc’s iTunes topped 1 billion for the first time, rising 27 percent, Nielsen said. Music companies such as Warner Music Group Corp count on digital revenue from downloads and ring tones to counter Internet piracy and shrinking demand for CDs.
“We’re moving towards the inevitable digital environment,” Ted Cohen, a Los Angeles-based media and entertainment consultant with TAG Strategic LLC, said in an interview. “Whether it’s on a cellphone or a computer, people now want instant access to music.”
Nielsen tracks unit purchases, not dollar sales of music. With spending going more online and consumers cutting their purchases of compact discs, industry revenue has declined.
WARNER MUSIC
Warner Music last month reported fiscal 2008 sales fell 2 percent after adjusting for currency changes.
Digital album sales rose 32 percent to 65.8 million, slower than the 53 percent rise in 2007 and not enough to counter the drop in CD sales. Over the past two years, album sales have declined 27 percent.
WAITING GAME: The US has so far only offered a ‘best rate tariff,’ which officials assume is about 15 percent, the same as Japan, a person familiar with the matter said Taiwan and the US have completed “technical consultations” regarding tariffs and a finalized rate is expected to be released soon, Executive Yuan spokeswoman Michelle Lee (李慧芝) told a news conference yesterday, as a 90-day pause on US President Donald Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs is set to expire today. The two countries have reached a “certain degree of consensus” on issues such as tariffs, nontariff trade barriers, trade facilitation, supply chain resilience and economic security, Lee said. They also discussed opportunities for cooperation, investment and procurement, she said. A joint statement is still being negotiated and would be released once the US government has made
‘CRUDE’: The potential countermeasure is in response to South Africa renaming Taiwan’s representative offices and the insistence that it move out of Pretoria Taiwan is considering banning exports of semiconductors to South Africa after the latter unilaterally downgraded and changed the names of Taiwan’s two representative offices, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday. On Monday last week, the South African Department of International Relations and Cooperation unilaterally released a statement saying that, as of April 1, the Taipei Liaison Offices in Pretoria and Cape Town had been renamed the “Taipei Commercial Office in Johannesburg” and the “Taipei Commercial Office in Cape Town.” Citing UN General Assembly Resolution 2758, it said that South Africa “recognizes the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as the sole
NEW GEAR: On top of the new Tien Kung IV air defense missiles, the military is expected to place orders for a new combat vehicle next year for delivery in 2028 Mass production of Tien Kung IV (Sky Bow IV) missiles is expected to start next year, with plans to order 122 pods, the Ministry of National Defense’s (MND) latest list of regulated military material showed. The document said that the armed forces would obtain 46 pods of the air defense missiles next year and 76 pods the year after that. The Tien Kung IV is designed to intercept cruise missiles and ballistic missiles to an altitude of 70km, compared with the 60km maximum altitude achieved by the Missile Segment Enhancement variant of PAC-3 systems. A defense source said yesterday that the number of
Taiwanese exports to the US are to be subject to a 20 percent tariff starting on Thursday next week, according to an executive order signed by US President Donald Trump yesterday. The 20 percent levy was the same as the tariffs imposed on Vietnam, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh by Trump. It was higher than the tariffs imposed on Japan, South Korea and the EU (15 percent), as well as those on the Philippines (19 percent). A Taiwan official with knowledge of the matter said it is a "phased" tariff rate, and negotiations would continue. "Once negotiations conclude, Taiwan will obtain a better
RSS