Chart Turnover and Sales in the Recorded Music Industry: 1990-2005

Chart turnover and sales in the recorded music industry are examined before and during the growth of the Internet as a music source. Chart turnover is measured as the monthly turnover in Billboard's Top 200 albums chart. Monthly data on expenditures and price indices for music and related goods, as well as demographic and income data, are used in a multivariate structural time series analysis that allows the capture of an unobserved component. We find that turnover positively affects sales, but also that sales are affected positively by an unobserved component that declines in magnitude after 2000.