While fan-to-mortar albums aren't a flood beast, the industry should still be wary of bubbles after big sales numbers.
Read Entertainment | yiqiduyu
Text | Garlic jelly horn
Last year, the Global Music Report 2022 released by IFPI, an international association of the phonographic industry, showed that global physical record sales revenue increased by 16.1% to $5 billion in 2021, the first increase in 20 years. CD revenue also grew for the first time in nearly 20 years and grew rapidly in Asia. At the same time, people's interest in vinyl records has also increased significantly in 2021, with sales increasing by 25.9% year-on-year.
Now it seems that the recovery of the physical record industry may continue.
According to the Korean media "이코노미스트", according to statistics, based on the top 400 sales in 2022, the sales volume of physical records reached 7419w+, an increase of 29.9% over last year's 5000w+ sheets. According to the Luminate report, sales of cassette albums in the United States increased by 28% to 440,000 in 2022, and physical albums accounted for about 70% of all form album sales, both digital and physical.
Domestic consumption enthusiasm for physical albums is also undiminished. At the end of last year, Wang Yuan's vinyl record "Carnival in the Living Room" sold 24W+ copies during the 48-hour limited sales period, and the sales exceeded 70 million yuan. In February this year, Times Youth Group released its second physical album "Utopian Youth", with sales exceeding 100 million, ranking first on the total best-selling list of QQ Music's best-selling physical albums.
At present, the recovery of the physical record industry comes from many aspects, but the most contributor is the fan economy.
1
Fan consumption enthusiasm that cannot be underestimated
From a global perspective, the recovery of physical records comes from several aspects, one is that music Live is difficult to travel due to the epidemic, which strengthens people's demand for buying physical albums; Second, after digital music has become the mainstream listening form, the permanent ownership of physical album purchases makes it have stronger collection value; Third, CDs, tapes, vinyl and other relatively traditional record media, for the current young people because of "retro" has a sense of trend, listening to songs with physical records is a cool thing, but also driven some young people's enthusiasm for physical record consumption.
However, in the phenomenon of soaring physical record sales, the biggest support should be the fan economy at work.
According to the IFPI report, the surge in CD revenue in 2021 came from the Asian market, and the rapid growth of Korean physical album sales in the same year may be the main influencing factor on the premise of maintaining stable sales in Japan, the main market of physical records. According to the statistics of South Korea's Gaon Chart chart, the sales of Korean physical albums in 2021 have soared, an increase of 36.9% compared with 2020. Among them, the total sales of the top 400 physical albums reached about 58 million, an increase of 31% over 2020.
The rise of the Korean physical album market comes from the K-POP drive. According to KOREAN SALES, in the middle of 2022, artists such as BTS, NCT DREAM, TXT, LIN HERO, SEVENTEEN, STRAY KIDS AND OTHER ARTISTS HAVE SUCCESSIVELY CREATED NEW ALBUM MILLION-SALES MYTHS. These artists are all show people and idols without surprise.
So let's look at the country, in 2021, the first physical album "Year of the Dancing Elephant" of the Times Youth Group took less than 5 days to exceed 100 million in sales, and this year's second physical album "Utopian Youth" sold more than 100 million in less than 5 minutes. In the total statistics list of QQ Music's best-selling physical albums (the total statistics list data is the actual sales generated by the products after the launch of the Poutao Mall on September 1, 2021), the TOP10 are from the Times Youth Group, Wang Yuan (2 albums on the list), Ju Jingyi, Lu Han, Huang Minghao, Wang Jiaer, Xue Zhiqian, PANTHEPACK, Yu Yan's albums, except for Xue Zhiqian, other artists also have idol status, and even Xue Zhiqian is also a draft debut.
It can be said that the main audience of physical records in the past two years is basically the fan base, which has also prompted more and more idols to choose to release physical albums in addition to digital albums. For example, recently, Cai Xukun released the physical album "KUN 2023 AET LAB LIVE" of his online concert Live, although it caused some fans to be dissatisfied due to the high pricing, but I think this physical album will still hand over satisfactory sales results for the company.
In this wave of physical album popularity, idols' physical albums have higher prices than past albums. The Times Youth Group's "Utopian Youth" is priced at 168 yuan, Wang Yuan's "Living Room Carnival" secret greenhouse series vinyl record is priced at 286 yuan, Ju Jingyi's ninth anniversary physical commemorative album "IX" is priced at 89-219 yuan, Cai Xukun's Live album that caused some fans to be dissatisfied is priced at 182 yuan, compared to the price of Xue Zhiqian's album "Innumerable" that rushed into the TOP10 at only 89 yuan, but this also highlights the role of the fan economy in it.
Of course, underneath the high price is that the physical album provides more benefits to the fan base. For example, these physical albums are first of all concept albums, from the outer packaging design to the accompanying content, all echo the music content to form a complete concept, the purchase of physical albums has a stronger sense of ritual, thus having more consumption value than buying digital albums;
Secondly, idols' physical album "with gifts" are also richer than the physical albums of the past, in addition to lyric books and posters, today's idols' physical albums also have special small cards and other items related to the concept of the album, such as physical ticket stubs for online live concerts, annual calendars printed with idol posters, and handwritten letters from artists.
It can be said that most of the current physical albums are goods that serve fans, fan purchases constitute acts of supporting idols, and idol physical albums become benefits to give back to fans and channels for communication with fans, so under this logic, the true love fans of idol can hardly resist the desire to buy one.
2
Fans have gone astray toward physical albums ≠ the record industry
Although some voices think that it is bad for physical albums to become part of the fan economy, in fact, the album itself is produced by the positioning of goods, rather than a pure content medium.
In the era when people had to listen to songs through physical media, in addition to radio, records were the only channel for people to access music, and in order for people to consume music outside of free radio, they needed to put more thought into selling music, so the concept of albums gradually formed.
An album generally refers to a media in which more than a certain number of songs or compositions are collected together and released to the outside world. Considered to have been the first work to define the modern form of the album, the Beatles' 1976 release of Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club, which included a printed photograph as part of the musical creator's artistic expression. That is, the concept of albums appeared for better sales, and its selling point is the artistic packaging including music content.
In other words, the original album was aimed at not "passers-by" who listened, but people who were interested in the album creator and the artistic concept of album creation. However, with the popularity of music entertainment, the development of popular music, and the formation of record stores, albums have gradually become a commodity that people who love music will buy. Walking into a record store to find your favorite covers, auditioning to find your favorite music, and then buying it home and listening to it repeatedly became the main consumption process of later albums.
Then, the physical album that is now moving towards the fan economy can also be regarded as a return - providing an artistic physical album with music content for people interested in artists is very similar to when the concept of albums was first born.
From this point of view, the development trend of physical albums that have become part of the fan economy is less worrying.
3
We really need to rely on
Does the new way to play physical albums save the recording industry?
At a time when the idol industry is developing maturely, the addition of the fan economy has also brought some new changes in the gameplay of physical albums. As mentioned earlier, today's idol physical albums are often accompanied by limited artist cards, and the uniqueness and scarcity of these small cards have become one of the main motivations for fans to buy physical albums.
Such collected content can obviously mobilize fans' enthusiasm for consumption, and around small cards, some new record stores are now also playing the "blind box economy".
In the past two years, there have been many offline record stores in first- and second-tier cities, many of which have set up card drawing machines, which are mixed with small cards such as artist cards and signing party cards attached to physical albums into a set of calipers, and let fans experience blind box music in the form of random drops. Some offline stores can buy any album for 140 yuan or more and pay an additional 30 yuan to get a chance to draw a card.
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Such a rule is obviously that record stores use the fan economy to drive consumption in the record store, for fans, such a designated card pool to draw cards, both the fun of opening blind boxes, but also a more stable guarantee, after all, even if you buy a physical album, you may not be able to get a limited number of cards in the album. Therefore, just the design of the small card has made fans, album distributors, and offline record stores "satisfied".
What is more exaggerated is that in South Korea, in order to maximize the "effect" of the small card, it also launched a cheap disk, that is, a low-priced physical album, which has a simpler configuration and workmanship than the conventional physical album, and does not focus on the concept of music art, but takes the artist ID small card as the main attraction. Basically, the price of the cheap disk is half or a quarter of the regular physical album, and obtaining the small card you want at a lower cost directly pokes at the demand of fans and promotes larger consumption, which is probably the reason why domestic card drawing machines can exist.
It can be said that because of the emergence of the artist card, the idol physical album has really moved towards the fan economy, which has greatly increased the sales of the physical album, but in essence, the recovery of the record industry does not represent the improvement of the music industry.
When the Internet had an impact on the recording industry, the recording industry practitioners were calling for saving the industry, but at that time it was out of helplessness to piracy, piracy meant that the music industry's income on the record side plummeted, and now, genuine digital music has become the income pillar of the music industry, and the income of physical records no longer directly affects the rise and fall of the music industry, so it is a little "insincere" to say that today's physical records rely on the fan economy to save.
To be sure, the record industry can pick up somewhat, which is good news for the music industry, but if people consume physical albums driven by artist cards, then the future of the physical record industry is still not bright enough. After all, the artist card can exist in the physical album now, and it may exist in other forms in the future. And if fans buy because of the artistic concept of the physical album and its collectibility, it may be a healthier direction for fans to the physical album.
So, while fan tropic albums aren't a flood, the industry should still be wary of bubbles after big sales numbers, and those good things may not last long.