Spanish Audience Turns To Classic Compilations November 23, 2009
- Global
| Retail
By Howell Llewellyn, Madrid
With very few new Spanish releases selling well, it seems that fans here are turning to old classics for musical solace.
Recorded music sales slumped 30% in the first six months this year, and yet compilation albums of hits of the '70s, '80s and '90s are breaking compilation sales records.
Three volumes of classics compiled by national golden oldies net M-80 Radio and released by Universal Spain, have spent a combined 300 weeks in the charts with total sales of 270,000 units, says labels body Promusicae. Even more remarkable is that each volume is in fact a three-album box.
Promusicae says M-80 Vol. 1, released in September 2005 with 139 weeks in the charts, and 150,000 sales, is the compilation album with most permanence in the charts since Promusicae began collecting these data.
M-80 Vol 2, released April 2006, has sold 78,000 units during 95 weeks in the charts. And M-80 Vol. 3, released February 2007, has sold over 41,000 in 67 weeks on the charts.
M-80 has 600,000 daily listeners, and is Spain's fourth most popular national music net, according to media survey group EGM. It belongs to media holding Grupo Prisa's radio division Cadena SER.
Universal Iberian Peninsula (Spain & Portugal) president Fabrice Benoit passed through M-80's office in SER's central Madrid HQ to present a series of platinum and gold records.
The double platinum for M-80 Vol. 1 was handed to Jorge Flo, director of SER's Cadenas Musicales. A platinum disc for sales of M-80 Vol. 2 was received by Luis Merino, music director of Prisa's international radio division Unión Radio, and M-80 Radio director Manu Dávila took the gold disc for sales of M-80 Vol. 3.
"This is the first album edition we have done jointly with Prisa, and of course we are delighted with the result," said Benoit. Asked why he thought the M-80 Radio compilations had sold so well, Dávila commented: "I suppose people will always look back on the classic songs of their youth. These nine albums [three triple boxes] are the youth soundtrack for people around the 38-year-old mark".
The 30 years of classic songs include numbers from artists such as Texas, Tom Jones, Tears for Fears, Rod Stewart, the Cardigans, INXS, and the Cranberries.
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