EMI sold 69,000 Paul McCartney albums last year. That is from his entire post-Beatles catalong.
Paul McCartney left for a smaller label, Concord, this year and took his back catalog with him.
The record industry is in the “dumps” because the corporations releasing music suck.
People try to tell me that it ISN’T the back catalogs keeping them afloat but with new album sales so depressed, it doesn’t take a lot of sales of albums that already made back their production costs and have no advertising budget to keep the money rolling into the company.
If the same corporations didn’t own the tv stations/cable channels/film studios/magazine companies, perhaps some of today’s talent could rise up.
Say what you will about Nirvana, they were a band on a small label (SubPop) that could take a huge market share. Today that market would be largely untapped in exchange for more boi bands, nu pop punk metall, and hip dip hop with acutone vocalz.
Sad to say probably the best thing that happened to Sony Music this year was Michael Jackson dying.