Seven Hundred and Ninety, Hand in Hand to Dominate the List

Winner, "Mars Jukebox," Bruno Mars.

Runner-up, "Vision of Perfection," Justin Timberlake.

Runner-up, "Seven", King for a Day.

The fourth place, "Memory", Daft Punk Band.

The above are the top four in North America's year-end album sales list in 2013, and they are also the only four albums that have exceeded three million sales this year.

Behind them, Eminem's "The-Marshall-Mathers-LP-2", Pink Lady's "The-Truth-About-Love", One Direction "Youth Midnight Field (Midnight-Memories)" and so on.

As well as "Babel" by Sons of Mumford, "Take-Me-Home" by One Direction, and "Night-" by Magnum Dragon, they occupy the top ten respectively. The remaining seats of the first name.

Among them, the two official studio albums released by One Direction in December 2012 and November 2013 both entered the list, occupying two positions.

However, the final sales were about the same. "Youth Midnight Show" was 2.5 million, and "Take Me Home" was 2.4 million. The results are relatively stable, which also means that their fan groups have relatively stabilized. It may not be possible to burst out more energy, but the basic disk can guarantee it.

Looking at the year-end album sales list in 2013, the sales of the top ten are all above 2 million, but that’s all. Starting from the eleventh place, the sales are all below 2 million, and this is once again felt by the entire music industry Even the top superstars have to face severe tests in the severe winter.

For example, Taylor Swift, who released a new album at about the same time as Bruno Mars in November last year, "Red" sold only 1.9 million this year-although it has entered the second natural Years, but compared to Bruno and Taylor himself, the results are lower than expected.

Later, this also prompted Taylor to switch tracks, from country to pop, releasing his fifth studio album and first pop music album in October 2014, "1989".

For example, the new albums of Katy Perry and Rihanna have won good media reviews, but the sales volume is only hovering around 1.8 million.

Another example is McMur, Ryan Lewis, and Kendrick Lamar, who shined in the Grammy nomination stage this year. The market performance is only mediocre. The latter's professional music critics' evaluation can rank among the top five of the year, but the album only sold more than 500,000 copies.

certainly,

Objectively speaking, these results are not bad, but compared with the music market in its heyday, there is still a clear gap.

Including Beyoncé, Drake, Jay-Z, Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus and many other high-profile artists, the final album sales were far below expectations.

It is worth mentioning that Shine’s self-titled debut album, like the One-Day King’s "Seven", won widespread attention with the help of the Grammy boom, and its year-end sales reached 1.7 million copies, ranking among the top in the final list. Twenty, surpassing Derek and Jay-Z and other music giants.

The wave of market downturn has inevitably swept over, but the habit of collecting albums that has been accumulated for a century will not disappear in a short time. Good music and good albums can still drive the market, just like Adele's "21" , and the "seven" of the king of the day.

It is precisely because of this that although "Seven" is only the third place in the year-end list, it has gained more attention than Bruno and Justin.

Perhaps, people are still more curious about fresh faces.

If the downturn of physical albums is the inevitable result of the impact of the trend of the times, the changes in digital audio sources and online listening methods have completely broken people's life patterns, and the inherent market balance has been broken; then the rise of digital audio singles is also possible. foreseeable inevitable result.

However!

This year did not see the astonishing prosperity of last year's three major monster singles sweeping the world, which seems to prove once again the cruel fact that the music market has shrunk in an all-round way.

But after the year-end single sales list came out, this idea was overturned——

Although there are not as many phenomenal singles this year as last year, the average score of singles has risen across the board, including the number of listens on major platforms, the number of downloads of digital audio sources, the number of discussions on social networks, etc. The popularity of singles has generally risen, which can be described as It is a hundred flowers blooming and competing for beauty.

It can be seen from the year-end single sales list.

The sales volume of a single is no longer an intuitive number like a physical album, but a score of a digital audio source converted from data such as the number of listening times, downloads, streaming media performance, etc., which can be regarded as a combination of popularity and sales. An inevitable result of the development of the times.

After all, physical albums only need to count sales, but digital music sources are disseminated in different ways on different platforms. It is difficult to reflect the performance of singles by traditional download statistics. Changes are made progressively, and the year-end list is no exception.

Last year, there were a total of 16 singles with a sound source score of 4 million points. Among them, "The Most Familiar Stranger" and "Maybe Electric Me" became the only two singles that broke through 10 million points. Another work "In the Mood for Love" scored 7.8 million, ranking third on the year-end list.

This year, there are a total of 22 singles with a sound source score exceeding 4 million points, and half of them have exceeded 6 million points. Performance has risen across the board, which is clearly visible.

In the end, the year-end singles chart champion in 2013 was won without any suspense by the divine song "Blurred Boundaries" by Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams.

This single has broken through the level of "Monster" and directly reached "God", and its sound source score has exceeded 11 million points, even surpassing last year's "The Most Familiar Stranger" and Adele's "Falling into the Abyss" the year before. The most popular single since the 2010s can occupy a place even in the long river of history.

So, some netizens commented:

"Although we don't have the top three singles this year, we have the Divine Comedy 'Blurred Lines' and Ka Er Tian Wang 'Classic'. We don't envy 2012 at all."

The discourse carries a kind of joke and ridicule, but it is also an undeniable reality. To be precise, there are quite a few singles that have reached the level of "Demon Single" this year. From the perspective of sound source scores, there are already seven singles that have equaled or even surpassed last year's "In the Mood for Love".

That is to say, perhaps only one song has exceeded the 10 million sound source score, but seven songs have exceeded the sound source score of 7.8 million—that is, the score of "In the Mood for Love", doubled from last year more than enough.

No wonder!

No wonder people think that there are not as many "phenomenal works" this year as there were last year, because...they have seen more, so it is not surprising.

Moreover, this year also continued last year's situation——

Artists who do well on the album chart tend to underperform on the singles chart, and vice versa.

This further proves that the dislocation between the album market and the singles market presents a different face of the current music market. For all record companies and all singers, when new works are released, positioning becomes crucial.

This is a brand new subject.