Old & New Music Competing!

This thesis sets out to clarify the sales distribution between new and old music in the United States. Analysing the past decade of music sales, the shift from physical to digital, as well as the decreased importance of the album as a format, is evident. Less obvious, is the trend of increased sales of catalogue music, especially deep catalogue more than 36 months in release. This observation points to an important but often ignored trait of online music consumption. As opposed to the long-tail theory, which states that niche content will ultimately dominate sales in an online environment, adding time in release to the equation leads to a different discourse. In contemporary music consumption, the distribution of sales is shifting because old hits increasingly compete with current ones.!