Fall CDs: Can AC/DC, Kanye, Pink, and Britney save music industry?
Music sales, which seems all-bad, all-the-time these days, just gets worse.
According to Nielsen SoundScan, the third quarter of 2008 finished with 297.9 million albums sold so far this year, which is down 12% from 2007’s totals at this time.
A boatload of music, about 200 million albums, will need to be sold through the rest of the year to break even with last year’s 500.5 million final tally.
That puts the pressure on a number of high-profile fall CDs to sell well.
Here are ten CDs we think can do the job.
– Kanye West, “808’s & Heartbreak”
– AC/DC, “Black Ice”
– Beyonce, Untitled
– Nickelback, “Dark Horse”
– Kenny Chesney, “Lucky Old Sun”
– Britney Spears, “Circus”
– John Legend, “Evolver”
– Pink, “Funhouse”
– Guns ‘N Roses, “Chinese Democracy”
– Taylor Swift, “Fearless”
– “High School Musical 3″ soundtrack
– Fall Out Boy, “Folie A Deux”
Kevin C. Johnson has covered the St. Louis' music and nightlife scene for the past decade. 
People in the music industry love to whine about the decline of CD sales, but no one ever talks about the iTunes cash cow. How much revenue have mp3’s brought in the last 5 years? $1/song is about what you pay for a CD anyway, and online sales have exploded. Of course, the music industry wants it both ways and wants you to pay 2-3 times for the same song. No thanks.