Album sales up for first time since 2004
The Nielsen SoundScan mid-year report music sales report has arrived with that rare bit of good news for the music industry. Overall sales were up, and album sales were up - by all of 1% - for the first time in seven years.
The Nielsen SoundScan mid-year report music sales report has arrived with that rare bit of good news for the music industry. Overall sales were up, and album sales were up - by all of 1% - for the first time in seven years.
What's the title of that 1966 Richard Farina novel? Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me. So let's not get too excited here. Still, despite a decade of double digit decline and even though we're rapidly moving into a streaming digital world where conventional ideas of music ownership are destined to change as quickly as you can say 'iCloud,' even a slight sales bump is welcome good news for a beleaguered industry.
And that's true, even if the sales numbers are in part a result of deeply discounted albums: Lady Gaga's Born This Way, for instance, has solds upwards of 1.5 million albums, but hundreds of thousands of those went for 99 cents on Amazon.
Adele's 21 is the biggest seller of the year, with 2.5 million copies moved. 992,000 of those are digital copies, and any minute now, the Brit pop-soul singer's sophomore release will move past Eminem's Recovery to become the biggest digital selling albuim of all time.
Overall digital sales are up 19%, and digital tracks gained by 11%. And the increases are pretty much across the board. Vinyl continues it's comeback, with a 41% increase over last year, and classical sales were up 13% over the same period in 2010.
Jim Donio of the the Marlton-based National Association of Recording Merchandisers (NARM) offered this statement of trenchant analysis: “We are understandably cautious, but it is indeed exciting to see that the needle is moving in the right direction. ... I think there is a confluence of factors, including the shut down of Limewire; more paths for legitimate digital commerce; a combination of successful new and catalog product offering great music from Adele, Lady Gaga, Bruno Mars, Mumford and Sons, and Katy Perry, among others; new value propositions being embraced by music fans; the impact of Record Store Day; enhanced marketing efforts that maximize the use of social media tools; and immediate access to music from TV programming.”
Below, Adele, who's pictured above, rolls in the deep.
Previously: Jane Scott, RIP Follow In the Mix on Twitter here
