Concert DVDs lift anemic music sales

What do Barbra Streisand and the Doobie Brothers have in common? Both have new concert DVDs hitting stores Tuesday, joining the flood of musicians who have released music in a format that continues to provide rare good news in a bleak period for the record industry.

Through last week, CD sales for the year have increased a modest 9% while music DVD sales have shot up 123% over the same period last year, according to the Nielsen SoundScan sales monitoring service. That extends a trend that was evident in 2003, when sales of music DVDs jumped almost 105% over 2002.

“It’s one of our biggest growth categories,” says Tower Records Southwest region director Bob Feterl. “We recently expanded those sections in every single store.”

The growth outpaces increases in U.S. sales of DVD players, which were up 34% last year over 2002 figures, according to the Digital Entertainment Group, which tracks hardware sales. The organization says that more than half of all U.S. homes now have DVD players, and predicts that that proportion will rise to two-thirds by the end of this year.

“When you compare VHS to DVD, the quality of the picture and sound, the number of songs and time you can put on those discs is amazing,” Feterl says. “And there is a lot of stuff available under $10 -- good titles too. Labels are going with multiple pricing where they’ll come out with something new for $19, then after a few months it will go down to $14 and then down to $9. That spurs interest and keeps it fresh.

“There’re no boundaries anymore. They’re coming out in all genres -- country, classical music, really obscure jazz, world music. It’s all out there.”

-- Randy Lewis