Music Best Practices

In correlation with the April CBA Retailers+Resources feature articles on entertainment today, CBA has created a Top Ten list of Music Best Practices. Focusing on keeping the right business practices in music is crucial right now. It is often easy to divert one’s attention to so many different directions as a retailer, and one way the symptoms of this lack of focus show up is in declining music sales for stores. By keeping focused and implementing even just a few of these changes, stores’ music sections can be revived and transformed. If you have other suggestions or best practices, as always, let us know what you’re doing.

1. Always have best selling music on-hand—use best seller lists based on direct customer sell through like CBA’s Custom Inventory Accelerator, CROSS:SCAN and Above the Treeline provide, or the best seller list in Retailers + Resources Magazine.

2. Always have music some music on sale at a reduced price—create the perception that you do have music product on sale—look for music specials from distributors of remainder products.

3. Use Christian radio to hookup with Christian music lovers—over half of our Christian music buyers (57% from 2007 Sound Decisions research) listen to Christian radio everyday—83% listen every week—89% listen every month.