The annual 2010 billboard summary shows that Swedish X5 Music is the most successful classical music label in the U.S. sharing first place with Universal.
The billboard summary of the 50 largest classical albums shows that X5 has 13 positions, Universal 13, Sony Music 7, Warner 2, EMI and Naxos 1.
Univeral actually have higher positions than X5 but the remarkable thing is that X5 exclusively sold its albums digitally. Ninety percent of Universal’s classical sales in the U.S. consist of physical discs.
– In our opinion we do not really compete with the record labels. They have their discs, which they subsequently digitalize and then sell digitally while our goal is to package music to be as easily accessible as possible for the digital listeners. Thanks to our successes the way we look at music has been more accepted which has lead to even better marketing cooperations and catalogues. This weekend our album “50 Greatest Pieces Of Classical Music†was #1 on iTunes’ album list in Germany, Austria and Top 10 in England. Beyoncé’s new album was #9. We will now persuade the boys and girls in cowboy hats that this works with their music, too, says Johan Lagerlöf, CEO X5 Music.
X5 Music’s venture of signing new catalogues and artists in the United States started at New Year’s and the first products from the American office will be released at Christmas 2011.
http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/charts/yearendcharts/2010/classical-albums