Chapter 7The U.S. Industry Numbers

Contents

Sales Trends

Genre Trends

Market Share of the Major

Outlets

Catalog Sales

Industry Concentration

Conclusion

Glossary

References

Sales Trends

In the early 1990s, the recording industry was in the midst of a replacement cycle, where consumers were in the process of replacing their old vinyl and cassette collections with the first digital format—the compact disc (CD). In 1994, there was a 20% increase in sales, to over $12 billion. This boom was fueled by discount retailers such as Best Buy and Circuit City aggressively entering the music market, opening up a multitude of retail outlets, and using discounted CD prices as a loss leader to attract customers. These practices, along with the concept of selling ...

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