Soundtracks: Please don't stop the music

Every year, fewer and fewer Australian films and television shows are releasing soundtrack albums. Once considered a valuable promotional tool, changes in both the screen and music industries are threatening their existence. Aravind Balasubramaniam reports.

It is a sign of the times when the #1 Australian film of the year, aimed at a young demographic, chooses not to release a soundtrack album. Ten years ago, it would have been seen as an excellent opportunity to  promote both the film and a record company’s selection of up and coming bands, but in 2010 Omnilab Media’s Tomorrow, When the War Began was only released a single on iTunes.

“When you walk into a record store that used to have a soundtrack section, it has become highly evident that the section has shrunk remarkably over the last few years” said Underbelly score composer Burkhard Dallwitz.
ABC Music is the label that has published the soundtracks to films such as Samson & Delilah and Balibo, as well as the pop-oriented album for the ABC3 show Dance Academy. According to its director Robert Patterson, it’s difficult to estimate the exact size of the soundtrack market in Australia because the Australian Record Industry Association (ARIA) doesn’t measure it as a standalone genre. Instead, film scores tend to be counted towards the classical charts, while pop music soundtracks are considered compilations.
“Overall the market is very small and certainly smaller than 10-15 years ago when there were a number of very commercially successful albums for Braveheart, Shine, Titanic or Gladiator. The experience internationally is similar to the Australian one,” he said.
In the Australian market soundtracks tend to sell poorly, and even worldwide blockbusters like Twilight are struggling to shift units. There are, of course, exceptions; the US musical show Glee has done remarkably well, and local efforts like the Packed to the Rafters albums have seen strong enough results to justify the launch of a third volume.

The reason behind the contraction in the music market, particularly in terms of physical copies, is the sales decline that began with the birth of internet-based download services – from the free Napster in the late
90s to today’s iTunes model.
Soundtracks, being specialised product, have suffered, but they’re still very much alive. For ABC Music, soundtracks are a small but important part of the release slate: “There will always be a market for them. While they do not generally generate significant revenues, there’s still a demand for them. We’ll become more selective about those we can release as physical CDs as that market declines, and digital-only releases will become increasingly commonplace.”