R&B Music Sales - Why the Decline?

The R&B genre has suffered a decline in album sales over the years. Previously one of the most popular forms of music has taken a backseat to the others, such as rock and pop music. The big question here is WHY?

R&B sales in 2015 were pretty low in comparison to other genres. Some of the top performing artists were only selling around 40 and 50 thousand copies of their albums, such as NeYo and Miguel. This year, K. Michelle is currently the number one R&B artist on the Billboard R&B chart, having sold 54,000 copies of her new album More Issues Than Vogue in her first week. But that pales in comparison to the number one pop and rock albums. In 2014, Taylor Swift's 1989 sold 1.3 million copies in just the first week of its release. According to Nielsen reports in 2014, rock and pop music were the top performers in sales but when it came to streaming, R&B and Hip Hop led the pack with 29% of total streams for the year. This presents a really interesting set of data. Why do listeners stream more R&B but purchase more pop and rock music?

A very interesting article from Atlanta Black Star suggests 8 reasons why R&B has died in the black community. It attributes "too much sex", "artists too limited" and "nobody is buying music anymore" as reasons for the decline in R&B popularity. In my opinion, two of these are very plausible reasons, not only why it has died in the black community but why it has died overall in comparison to other genres. There's lots of emphasis on sex and not enough emphasis on talent and lyricism. Many artists sing about very intimate things and body parts rather than creating music that people find vulnerable but encouraging and uplifting (like Taylor Swift does in "Shake It Off"). In a 2015 interview, Jill Scott commented that R&B doesn't get enough respect and she also eluded to the fact that there are some White artists that sing a very similar style of music that have much more success than Black artists.

In my opinion, all of these factors may in some way contribute to the decline of R&B music sales over the years. The big thing though is the focus on quality music. Perhaps if music was of greater quality, there would be more respect for it. This does not take away from the fact that other factors definitely contribute to its success, such as marketing and label support. Many opportunities are likely pitched to certain artists where success is guaranteed, so the majority of the artists are left with slim pickings and low numbers.

The question still remains and will likely never be answered definitively. Hopefully, in the next few years, the trend will turn upwards for the R&B community.