Supermarkets boost share at expense of specialists.

Supermarkets seriously hit the specialist music retailers last year as they increased their share of the albums market by more than a third.

Asda, Tesco and the other supermarkets grabbed a 15.3% share of album sales during 2000, according to newly-published research by Taylor Nelson Sofres' Audio Visual Trak division, with traditional music stores the biggest losers. The supermarkets increased their share of album sales by 39.1% during the year.

Audio Visual Trak account director Tamsin Timpson suggests this came largely from the migration of buyers from other sectors. "Specialists suffered most from increased supermarket trading, seeing their share decrease from 53% to 50%," she says, adding that the share of multiples such as Woolworths remained largely unscathed at 23%.

Significantly, the latest Audio Visual Trak data also challenges the DTI's recent pricing survey by suggesting that the average price of CD albums in the UK is 11.43 [pounds sterling] -- a markedly lower total than the prices quoted in the DTI's recent survey. "Our research includes discounted titles, giving a more balanced picture of the pricing issue," says Timpson.

She adds that the research, which is conducted through bi-weekly interviewing of a panel of 10,000 consumers, suggests that the overall growth in album sales across the ...