Various New Items

Album sales in the US are down 18.1 percent in August from the same time a year ago. To make matters worse, compared to the same period in 2007, sales were off by 37.2 percent.

Want more good music sales news? Album sales are down 14.5 percent compared to the same point last year and 31.1 percent versus 2007.

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Regardless of decrease in album sales, it looks like The Beatles will sell about 500,000 in the first week since the release of their remastered catalog. That being said, you can bet that they are coming to iTunes, just not yet. I don't know why everyone expected this to happen last week because it's not to anyone's advantage to release the band's physical and digital product too close together, as it would cannibalize physical sales.

If both Apple computer and Apple records wait until later in the year for the digital release they can take advantage of the Christmas market with sales items like last minute iTunes gift cards, and use the iTunes release as a second launch of the physical product to take advantage of the Holiday.

Let everyone buy the CDs for now, see what the sell-through is, then release on iTunes. That's what I'm predicting.

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A new NPD study finds that U.S. video game sales fell in August for the 6th month in a row as sales were down 16% from a year ago to $909 million and 14% year to date. Hardware sales were down 25% as well.

Isn't the gaming business starting to look like the music business, as it's sales spiral ever downward?

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In yet another NPD report, kids 12 and younger account for 2% of video game industry unit sales and households with kids in this age group comprise 45% of total industry sales. The report also states that 57% of kids ages 2-12 play video games, and only 62% of them use a computer.

This means that there is some room for growth in this segment of the market if the industry can capitalize on it.