Music Sales are up 8.5%, but country and christian CD's see a slight dip.
The Nielsen Company released its SoundScan midyear music industry report, providing a ray of hope for the album business that has faced instability in recent years.
Digital album sales in the first half of this year expanded 19 percent to 50.3 million units from 42.2 million, now accounting for one-third of album sales. Digital track sales grew 11 percent to 660.8 million from 597.4 million over the past six months.
Overall music sales (which includes albums, singles and music videos) are up 8.5 percent over the similar period in 2010, from 756 million to 821 million units. Overall album sales (physical and digital, plus track-equivalent albums, in which 10 tracks are counted as one album) are up 3.6 percent from 213.6 million to 221.5 million units, the report said.
“Certainly the fact that album sales are up is an encouraging sign,” said David Maddox, an assistant professor in the Mike Curb College of Entertainment and Music Business.
“One of the problems has been that people have gone to ordering tracks instead of albums.”
Maddox said the increase points toward an improvement in the quality of albums being produced by today’s hit makers.
“The music industry has been from pillar to post over these (past) seven years,” said Jim Donio, president of the National Association of Recording Merchandisers. “This is positive news for us.”
Several factors account for the turnaround, Donio says. He points to October’s court-ordered shutdown of peer-to-peer file-sharing website LimeWire; more ways for consumers to buy music digitally and to become aware of new releases via social media; and TV shows such as American Idol and Glee, which spark instant sales.
Adele’s 21 has been the biggest-selling album this year so far, moving 2.5 million copies. Lady Gaga’s Born This Way, which had the biggest single sales week, is second with 1.54 million. Rounding out the top five so far were Mumford & Sons’ Sigh No More (982,000 units), Jason Aldean’s My Kinda Party (763,000) and Bruno Mars’ Doo-Wops & Hooligans (686,000).
For the six months through July 3, rock, rap, new age, classical and electronic music enjoyed sales increases, while country was down 2 percent and Christian/gospel fell 4 percent.
Vinyl sales are up
Vinyl records have seen the sharpest increase in the music industry, up 41 percent over the past six months compared to the year-earlier period. This remains welcome, albeit not surprising, news to Doyle Davis, co-owner of local record store Grimey’s. “Sales are up here,” said Davis. “We are definitely on track to have our best year ever.”
Davis said sales have done particularly well over the past few years and continue to climb. “It’s not a fad,” Davis said. “It’s mostly young people that are spurring this — teens, people in their twenties and early thirties.”
Source:
http://www.tennessean.com/article/20...st-album-sales, with contributed Information from USA Today
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