Staying and Playing Power

For the music industry, the true power of hit albums is measured in years, not months. Frank Sinatra, the Beatles and Led Zeppelin may be gone, but their music still sells.

That tradition and its financial importance--older, or “catalog,” albums account for more than 30% of all sales in the $13.7-billion-a-year record business--explains why industry leaders are studying an ominous trend: The shelf life of new music, it seems, is getting shorter all the time.

While overall music sales are up, the sales of “recent catalog”--defined as albums that are between 15 months and 3 years old--have plunged.

One reason may be the industry obsession with finding the next hit song, a mind-set that has dominated like never before in the bottom-line environment of the conglomerate era. “It’s all about catchy songs, novelty hits, stuff that sells now but not for long,” is how one executive sums it up.

In 1998 alone, “recent catalog” sales dropped more than 20% from the previous year--even as sales of “deep catalog” (anything more than 3 years old) remained steady.

“Something is happening here,” says Mike Fine, chief executive officer of SoundScan, which tracks music sales. “There’s a definite trend and it may be a cause for concern.”

In interviews, leaders in the recording and retail businesses cite different factors for the trend. Some say it’s a product of the explosive growth of hip-hop music, whose fans embrace the latest street sound and quickly move on. But more sources cite the evaporation of fan loyalty in an era when the industry puts a premium on scoring today’s fleeting hit, not investing in music that may become tomorrow’s classic. All agree the pattern is disconcerting.

“We are very much worried about it because that’s the future for us: Healthy catalog is the healthy backbone to our business,” said Steve Kleinberg, senior vice president of marketing for Elektra Entertainment Group.

Elektra’s stable of artists includes Metallica, the superstars of catalog sales. The band’s self-titled 1991 album has been No. 1 on Billboard’s catalog sales chart for 22 weeks and the heavy metal outfit has four albums in that chart’s Top 40.

But will Elektra’s newer acts, such as Third Eye Blind, Busta Rhymes and Better Than Ezra, also become catalog stalwarts? Are they making music that will be alluring to fans a few years after their videos leave MTV rotation?

“That’s what we work at, and I believe that we are helping build careers,” Kleinberg said. While critics say career-building is a lost or ignored art, Kleinberg said it has merely gotten more difficult in the current market.

Radio was once the core avenue for spreading new music, but now consumers are also exposed to the latest song in videos, television shows, films, talk shows and the Internet.

“There are so many ways for the listener to engage the artist, and so much competition,” Kleinberg said. “It accelerates the way the audience perceives the artist, the way they enjoy the artist and, unfortunately, the way they move on to the next thing. It’s often too much too fast.”

Bob Feterl, a regional manager for retailer Tower Records, said his chain thrives more on catalog sales than new release business, and from his vantage point, “the quarter-to-quarter mentality” of the music industry is short-sighted.

“Catalog is built on the Beatles, Bob Marley, Miles Davis, John Coltrane--music that will sell forever,” Feterl said. “How many albums in the past 15 months will be like that? . . . I’m not sure [the industry] is developing careers, giving [artists] three or four albums to grow.”

Bertis Downs, the manager of R.E.M., echoes that point.

“Our first hit record was really on our fifth album,” Downs said, referring to R.E.M.’s “The One I Love” on “Document” in 1987. “We had the luxury of growing up, of incubating and maturing. I don’t know that that’s really possible anymore.”

The escalating popularity of downloading music via the Internet may shorten the shelf life of albums even more, Downs said. If fans can pluck a hit song from the Internet, they may be even less likely to purchase a slightly dated album if they come across it months after that hit has slid from the charts.

Still, Downs isn’t pessimistic about the long-term impact of these trends. “This business is all about cycles, and good music gets made,” he said.

One cycle that may be driving the trend is the gradual maturing of a young genre, namely hip-hop, said Bruce Resnickoff, president of the Universal Music group’s catalog division.

As hip-hop enters its second decade as a major force in popular music, the prevailing industry perception is that it sells strongly only as new music. Indeed, on the latest Billboard chart of catalog album sales, the Beastie Boys and Jay-Z have the only hip-hop albums among the Top 40.

But Resnickoff believes that will change. As the hip-hop fan base ages and broadens, he expects its catalog to gain strength.

“When you look at the quality and depth of hip-hop albums being made today, you see these aren’t albums selling on the strength of one song,” Resnickoff said, citing Jay-Z as an example.

“The genre is now developing years of significant repertoire. . . . It’s inevitable that it will eventually fill much of the void you’re seeing in slumping pop and rock catalog.”

And what about pop and rock?

Pop is currently dominated by light, youthful acts such as ‘N Sync and Britney Spears, whose music, according to one executive, “does not age well.”

As for rock, many of the catalog stars are the same ones who have dominated for more than a decade: Bob Seger, AC/DC, Pink Floyd and Fleetwood Mac.

One of the current rock acts that so far has defied the short shelf-life trend is Korn, a heavy-metal group that has two albums among the Top 25 catalog albums, according to SoundScan.

The band’s secret? Defy industry pressure to fit into radio formats or market trends, according to Korn bassist Reg “Fieldy” Arvizu.

“You look around and it seems like a lot of bands aren’t trying to stick around or do the work it takes to stick around,” he said. “They’re just trying to write that one hit single and blow up off that. And a lot of bands are afraid to stand up to the label or their managers and make the music they want to make.”