Courtesy of 6 music news comes the news that “Album sales in the UK reached a record high in 2003, fuelled by falling CD prices” and, even more encouragingly, “2003 was also a record year for live music, with more money spent on gigs than at any time since records began in 1914.”
Admittedly the drop in CD prices meant there was no increase in profits on their sales, but, hey, not much evidence (yet) to support those pundits who have suggested “the concept of the album is going to disappear” as I reported earlier.
(My own contribution supported only one of the trends: my CD purchases fell from an average of over 150 p.a. in 2001/2 to 68 in 2003, but I more than made up for this in hearing vastly more live music since I moved to London.)