Traxan

http://www.forbes.com/sites/hughmcin...tinum-in-2014/

We are now nine and a half months into 2014, and the sales numbers for the music industry are looking particularly grim. While the fourth quarter is typically when the most sales occur, things have never been quite so bad.

In 2014, not a single artist’s album has gone platinum. Not one has managed to cross that million sales mark.

One album has managed to sell over a million copies so far this year, but it’s a soundtrack. The ever-popular Frozen soundtrack may slowly be working its way down the charts, but it is by far the best selling collection this year. Though it doesn’t have any marquee names on it—those that are usually expected to sell the best—the soundtrack has managed to move 3.2 million copies so far, and with winter coming, that number is sure to rise.

Josh-da-man

There are three kinds of music fans.

1. The person who pays for music. Buys CDs or iTunes downloads.
2. The person who still listens to music, but doesn't pay for it. Piracy, Youtube, streaming.
3. The people who don't give a shit about music anymore, particularly new music, and don't even care enough to pirate stuff for free. They just listen to their old albums.

davidh777

Here you go:

auto

I buy vinyl and pay for spotify. Guess I'm number one. Works great for me.

Decker

Yup, that one will. And I'm pretty surprised that none has gone Platinum yet this year. I assume Beyonce went Platinum late last year.

Dan

This.

My Other Self

I still buy CDs, but I'm not really into mainstream music. I just support the artists usually by purchasing direct from them. And I listen to Pandora a lot.

Michael Corvin

Yeah, I still buy everything but not into mainstream stuff either.

stvn1974

Most of my favorite artists and bands are dead or broken up for decades. So I just buy reissues if I feel they are worth the upgrade. Looking at my iTunes collection I have bought 8 single cds and two box sets so far in 2014 and four of those albums are new releases by artists still around.

PhantomStranger

Hopefully everyone goes out and buys Leonard Cohen's new album, Popular Problems. I would hate to be a music industry executive in 2014, it must feel like a whip-and-buggy manufacturer felt right as the car was invented.

Ropes Pierre

+infinity

i would love it if that old codger would get a best selling album while top 40 crap was floundering.

DJariya

I still buy CDs, but I only purchase select artists. I'm not into a lot of the newer artists.

It's surprising that 2014 failed to have an artist sell over 1M records. Funny how multi-platinum artists like Mariah Carey and J-Lo had poor selling albums this year. Mariah's been struggling since the early 2000s. I think she's lost a lot of the magic she once had back in the early 90s. Another multi-platinum artist like Celine Dion is reportedly taking an indefinite leave from the industry to care for her sick husband. Even she already showed a lot of decline in sales.

I wonder if Adele plans to make a comeback in 2015. I'm sure a new record by her would make a killing since it's been 3 years since her last record.

Jason

The last batch of CDs I got were fusion-era Miles Davis albums and the Yes box set. And that was last December.

Other than that, it's been random individual tracks on iTunes and Amazon. I'd rather listen to static than a Taylor Swift album.

Jason

If Roger Waters would rejoin Pink Floyd, that just might happen. Other than that I don't see that happening.

Nick Danger

I'll occasionally buy CDs, but nothing released in the 21st century.

davidh777

I think I've bought more music than movies this year, not including cable/rental fees.

starseed1981

This is a pretty spot on analysis. I'm honestly a combination of all three. Generally, I don't really care for music that much nowadays. With ProTools and everything, everything just feels so manufactured. The new music that I do anticipate is from bands I used to like back in my teenage years or twenties. And even then I make the mistake of immediately comparing it to their seminal works...and often discard them right away. That being said I do like owning the definitive versions of my favorite albums. I've only purchased about 10 CDs in the past five years at 7 of them were special editions.

PerryD

For any current pop or alternative music, I can just listen to any of the several radio stations playing. My main music interest is metal, and I've been buying albums to support my favorite bands, many of which I've listened to for 30 years (Overkill, Exodus, Kreator, etc still putting out top notch music). Overkill's latest album was their highest charting ever, making the top 40, but even that was with less than 10,000 copies sold.

I mostly listen to Spotify at work, but in my car, I filled up a 32GB USB stick from my collection. My Accord is finicky about playing songs in order and showing album art, it took me a few hours to find the right tools (DriveSort, Mp3Tagger) to fix it up.

mostaccioli

give credit to the type of music that's been getting released the last 20 years.

Damfino

I guess it doesn't count that Apple "bought" the new U2 album for every iTunes user?

PhantomStranger

I still buy many albums each year, though they tend to be reissues of classic albums or archive material. I'm about to drop over a hundred on Dylan's Complete Basement Tapes set and plan to buy John Martyn's entire catalog in that lavish box set.

I did get Echo and the Bunnymen's new Meteorites album from this year, which has their classic sound intact.

Jason

It shouldn't.

AaronHernandez

Number 3 has always existed. It's not like my boomer parents and others like them were buying Nirvana and Pearl Jam records 20 years ago. Most people of every generation had always gotten a certain age and then been like whatever is popular sucks I am only gonna listen to stuff from my youth.

JeffTheAlpaca

A shame since the 2 songs I heard from that album so far are terrible and I am not the person who shits on every song she has done.

Matt

Stereogum: 1989 Will Become 2014′s First Platinum Album In Its First Week

When we learned that no 2014 albums had yet gone platinum, we speculated that Taylor Swift’s 1989 would be the first to do so. And indeed, Billboard is projecting that Swift’s latest will easily sell a million copies this week. That will make it Swift’s third straight album to go platinum in its first week, following 2010′s Speak Now and 2012′s Red. It will also mark the best opening week sales since Red sold 1.21 million in its opening frame. And it will instantly make 1989 the second-best selling album of 2014, trailing only the Frozen soundtrack’s whopping 3.2 million. Beyoncé’s self-titled surprise is the current #2 with 787,000 sold this year, though that figure doesn’t account for the 1.3 million copies it sold in the final three weeks of 2013.