in an article in de Volkskrant of August 7, some surprising information is given about the music business. there are daily messages in the media that record labels are having bad times, and that there sales are dropping because of the downloading and copying problem. wordwide album sales have indeed decreased with about 11%.
but according to this article, the smaller independent labels are not doing that bad as the majors, on the contrary, most have seen their sales growing fast lately! for instance, dutch labels de konkurrent and suburban have had their best year so far in 2002, and the english beggars group (4ad, xl, mo` wax, beggars banquet) is still growing 10-20% every year. dutch label excelsior lowered the standard prices of their cd’s, from 20 to 15 euro, which caused increasing sales. labelboss ferry roseboom doesn’t think downloading is a problem, “it’s even easier to make someone a fan of something”.
