The record industry was thrown a reality check at the NARM conference this week. 2 percent of releases made up 91 percent of sales from the 98000 releases of 2009.

What is even more of a concern, only 2.1% of releases managed to sell more than 5000 units.

NARM is the National Association of Recording Merchandisers [Wikipedia], an American based association whose members account for 85% of the US music market.

It isn't clear from the Undercover article what a "release" is, but other articles on the same topic specifically indicate 98000 "album" releases.

So in the US market, 1960 albums released in 2009 accounted for 91% of all sales of albums released in 2009. 2058 albums managed to sell more than 5000 copies.

The numbers sound low, but one number I'd like to see is how many albums released in the years before 2009 sold, compared to those released in 2009.

That is, how big a chunk of the total market is new music verses catalog, and are those percentages changing?