First hints of disc sales

[Frank]

Here are some sales figures:
According to an article in the Hifi World july 2002. The IFPI published the following numbers for hires discs (both DVD Audio and sacd sold in 2001)
300000 in America
100000 in Germany
150000 Australia, Canada, Japan, UK, Sweden and France.

Which brings the total at 550000.

I also have seen a link where a spokesman from warner was quoted and it said that Warner alone sold approx 350000 DVD Audio disc worldwide!

My guess is also that in Germany a lot of disc from company's like Tacet and MDG are sold.
In fact when I attended the Frankfurt High end show the 10 minutes I spent at a stand selling both DVD A and sacd I noticed that 4 other customers bought at least 2 dvd a titles each.

EMI, AIX, Naxos, Chesky and some others must have sold a fair number of titles as well. (30% of the 70+ titles I own are not from Warner)

So my estimate is that of the 550000 hires disc sold at least 450000 of them must have been DVD Audio's.

Frank

 

[MCunningham]

I saw these figures several months ago and bottom line is regardless of the numbers quoted, they are at best speculation. Both hi-res camps are keeping very tight lipped about worldwide software sales figures. Not to take away from your enthusiasm, but repeating unsubstantiated sales figures does nothing to help promote the format and only invites criticism from the opposing camp. I suggest we wait until official numbers are actually released. You can bet when they are, there will be a number of sites reporting them and not just one magazine.

mike

 

[Frank]

The numbers quoted in the hifi world magazine are published by the IFPI. ( www.ifpi.org ) These are the first numbers for hires formats as far as I know.

With the music industry suffering a sales decline -- to 881.9 million units in 2001 from 942.5 million in 2000, according to the Recording Industry Association of America, the first such decline since 1983 -- labels are rapidly creating new formats or improving standard CDs to get fans to repurchase their favorite albums.

DVD-Audios have sold about 350,000 copies worldwide, according to Paul Vidich, Warner Music Group's executive vice president of strategic planning and business development. Sales figures are not available for SACD.

''Launching a new format is something that, generally, you count in years not months. So the only thing I can compare this to is the launch of the CD,'' Vidich says. ``We have sold more DVD-Audios in our first year than we did in our first year of CD. That's one indicator that there are people out there buying the discs.''

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sorry about the link, I couldn't find it anymore but I saved the quote. (Article was published on a website Februari or March 2002)

I think my estimates are not that unreliable.

Frank

 

[Frank]

Another bit of sales so far.

...
how many DVD-A discs have actually been sold and are projected to be sold in the next few years? This last question, which more accurately judges the format's real success, left the DVD-A representatives fumbling for an answer until a Warners attendee said that in 2001 and 2002 his label has so far sold 170,000 discs to consumers. He added that Warners expects the Linkin Park DVD-A to reach 100,000 units alone when it is released. Nobody, however, would commit to future projections, insisting that there are too many variables and that it is far too early to tell
...

Source: www.stereophile.com/shownews.cgi?1412

It's not clear if this figure goes for all Warner labels doing DVD Audio or just one of them. Maybe the latter ( 'his label' ) but perhaps that's a bit optimistic. The question remains open if these are US sales or worldwide sales.

The 1.4 million DVD Audio players are US sales numbers.

Frank