“According to a new study, of the 13m songs available for sale on the internet last year, more than 10m failed to find a single buyer.

The research, conducted by the MCPS-PRS’s Will Page and Andrew Bud, brings us that much closer to proving Sturgeon’s Law – that 90% of everything is crap. It also provides evidence for the famous old rock critic adage – your favourite band sucks.

More importantly, these findings challenge the “long tail” theory that diverse, specialised items – though individually less popular – will together outsell mainstream “hits”.

Page is the chief economist at the MCPS-PRS Alliance, a not-for-profit royalty collection agency. According to his and Bud’s research, 80% of all revenue came from about 52,000 tracks – the “hits” that powered the music industry. Broken down by album, only 173,000 of the 1.23m available albums were ever purchased – leaving 85% without a single copy sold.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/dec/23/music-sell-sales