Music Sales Reach a Record High, But Not Through Album Sales
The music industry continues to adjust to the transaction from physical to digital.
It's becoming more obvious that people just don't buy CDs anymore. USA Today's Ken Barnes reported that although music sales reached a record high in 2008, album sales continued to drop. The Nielsen Company's year-end figures show that music purchases, which include CDs, vinyl, and digital purchases (including both single track downloads and entire albums), reached a new high of 1.5 billion sales, a 10.5 percent increase over 2007. Of those music purchases, more than 70 percent came from digital track downloads, a record total of 1.07 billion.
Consider this: In 2005, there were just two songs that exceeded 1 million downloads. In 2008, there were 71, almost double the number from 2007 (41). Track downloads exceeded album sales by a ratio of 2.5 to 1, yet Nielsen's President of Music, Rob Sisco, sees promise in online album sales. Considering there are very few albums that are so good that you want to buy all the songs, why would you pay $10 for the whole thing when there's only a few songs you really want? Do you think people will buy more albums than single tracks in the future?
