Hint: The Oldies Are Still Goodies

Bob Seger, Journey, Pink Floyd, Queen. . . . Looking down the list is like thumbing through a 1979 issue of Rolling Stone or a swap-meet stack of weathered LPs. But make no mistake, these acts and their CDs are not gathering dust at the nation’s music stores.

In retail reports issued last week, for instance, the 13-year-old “Journey’s Greatest Hits” sold 11,185 copies in seven days--a total that outperformed a number of hit albums from the past two years, including discs by Dr. Dre, Ricky Martin and Macy Gray.

The sales surprise is easy to overlook though, because the Journey disc--and albums by such icons as Bob Marley, Miles Davis and Patsy Cline--won’t be found on SoundScan’s weekly chart of best-selling albums for the simple reason that its formula jettisons most titles after 18 months.

That policy acknowledges the music world’s emphasis on new albums, new hits and new artists--that’s where the big jackpots are found. The older albums (collectively called “catalog” in the industry) are overlooked like a championship marathon runner at a sprinters’ convention.

“I’m not sure that anybody pays any attention,” Journey guitarist Neal Schon said of the sales for his band’s greatest-hits collection. “I’m certainly aware of it. But I’m also just blown away that it’s still there, still selling like that.”

Catalog accounts for about one-third of all albums sold each year in the U.S. Since breaking new acts is an expensive and unpredictable proposition, the steady-selling older titles help the music companies meet the bottom line.

“It’s tremendously important--it sustains you in the good times and in the lean times,” said Jeff Jones, senior vice president of Sony’s catalog branch, Legacy Recordings.

How dependable are some of the catalog albums? Billboard compiles a separate, less illustrious Top 50 just for catalog titles, and last week, sitting there at No. 12, was Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon,” the trippy 1973 epic that has logged a record 1,252 weeks on the tally. At No. 2, 1984’s “Legend” by Bob Marley & the Wailers celebrated its 614th week.

Then there’s the success of “1,” the Beatles’ greatest-hits package from last year. Though technically a new release, its sales (now past 7 million) are a testament to catalog muscle and have industry leaders eyeing their archives.

“To someone that has never heard a record, it’s brand-new,” said Jeff Ayeroff, former co-chairman of Virgin Records and a lead architect of the Beatles album’s marketing. “If it is a work of quality, it doesn’t matter when it was recorded. Take the Disney example: For a 5-year-old kid seeing ‘Snow White’ for the first time, it’s a brand-new movie. There’s a timelessness about certain things. . . . Jimi Hendrix, to a young kid, is just as vital today as anything new.”

Lending credence to that view are marketing surveys such as one by Sony’s Legacy that found almost half of the music buyers taking home Janis Joplin CDs are under 25. On the other end of the demographic range, a consumer profile by the Recording Industry Assn. of America shows that in the past 10 years, the fastest-growing segment of music buyers is the 45-or-older category, suggesting a ripe market for nostalgia.

Still, in these halcyon days for the music business, there’s even intrigue and volatility in the world of these sure-thing catalog sellers.

Overall catalog sales have flattened in recent years after the compact-disc boom of the 1980s, when music buyers replaced huge chunks of their LP collections with the new format. To coax consumers, many in the industry have followed the model of Rhino Records, the Santa Monica label that crafted splashy, loving and archival-minded collections from often-overlooked catalog.

It’s now standard practice among the major record companies to market and promote catalog reissues with the zeal once reserved for new releases. Lavish boxed sets crammed with photos and lower-priced, remastered reissues of classic albums are efforts to get consumers to invest in music they may already own.

“When CDs were introduced in the early to mid-’80s there was a huge rush to just get as much product as a label could get into the marketplace,” said Legacy’s Jones. “The discovery of new material and the combing of the vaults is now a real business at all of the major record companies. . . . We’re able now to look at these records again with greater distance, with more focus, more analysis, with better ears.”

Digital Downloads Threaten Sales

But with the conglomeration and narrowing profits among music retailers, many merchants are less willing to devote floor space to deep inventories of catalog albums when they need room for hot-selling DVDs and video games.

There is also uncertainty brought on by the Internet’s promise of a digital download marketplace: Letting decades of catalog, be it Frank Sinatra or the Clash, slip away like spilled coins on a busy street is a nightmare image for record companies. Piracy is only part of the challenge--there’s also pricing. Industry powers worry that digital download could end the primacy of the album format and lead consumers to buy single songs and expect them cheap.

Some also worry about the catalog of tomorrow. Some insiders say a sizable chunk of today’s music is so disposable that a generation of catalog may be compromised. One executive pointed to today’s ubiquitous youth pop acts as “the new Frankie Avalons and Osmonds, music of a moment that will not sell later even as nostalgia.”

It doesn’t help that rap fans, a dynamic clientele among new releases, show little allegiance to the genre’s catalog. On a SoundScan report showing the 40 top-selling catalog albums in the U.S. last week, only two rap titles were ranked, Tupac Shakur’s greatest hits and DMX’s “It’s Dark and Hell Is Hot.”

“It is such a current and vibrant form, there’s so much great hip-hop music out there, that people are spending their money continuously on the current product,” said Bruce Resnikoff, president of Universal Music Enterprises. “If and when hip-hop slows down as a viable current genre, I think you’ll see more of the classic hip-hop titles creep up.”

If the “rap issue” is the most nagging new catalog trend, the most pleasing for record companies is the “Behind the Music” factor. VH1’s flagship show may be mocked for melodrama, but the tell-all exposes serve as powerful memory nudges in 76 million households.

“If it is not the best, it is certainly one of the most effective tools for marketing catalog in recent years,” Resnikoff said. He added that the strength of the classic-rock format, especially in the American heartland, and the touring prowess of veteran acts also keep catalog champs selling.

Touring Helps Keep the Music Alive

“If you went into a coma in 1975 and woke up today and looked at the scheduling of tours in any city in America you would not realize you [had been] in a coma,” Resnikoff said. “You could see Bruce Springsteen, Journey, Peter Frampton, AC/DC. . . . That keeps the music alive. And there’s a lot of young people in those audiences.”

For Schon, whose band plays with Frampton at the Greek Theatre on Aug. 14, the youngsters dotting the crowds, the VH1-inspired sales bumps and the catalog chart all led the band to keep its shows and its latest album rooted to the past, faithfully.

“Some people say, ‘They just made a record like they made in the 1980s,’ ” Schon said. “Some people take that like that’s a bad review--I take that as a great compliment. Those 1980s albums are still selling.”