Russia Music Industry Decline

Numbers for the Russian Music Industry were recently released.  For the most part, they are going down quite fast.  CD sales were down 20% from the year before.  Radio was down in dollar terms 20-25%.  The one upside was live concert revenue.  This seems to be a trend all around.  Product sales that can be easily downloaded and traded are no longer making significant money for artists.  More money is being generated from performing live and generating income from ticket sales and merchandise sales.

One interesting piece from the Russian market in 2009 was that albums and single tracks released fell from 2008.  I would think that with the proliferation of recording equipment on many computers these days that those numbers would increase.  Perhaps these are only professionally-produced albums or tracks that only go through a certain route.  In either case, as an artist, be ready to be playing out live to make the money you desire.