Perhaps you've heard about how album sales are lagging. The numbers for compact discs have been steadily decreasing since the rise of the mp3. This year brought a new, alarming statistic however: For the first time ever, digital music sales are down.
Numbers from Nielsen Soundscan indicate that sales for both digital tracks and digital albums are down. There were 1.26 billion digital track downloads during 2013, down from 1.34 billion during 2012. That's a 5.7 percent decrease, which might not sound too terrible, but it is. When you look at the numbers in terms of billions, it doesn't appear to be a lot. But that's 80 million songs. If you were to remove the totals of the Top 10 bestselling tracks of 2013, that still wouldn't add up to 80 million.
Nielsen Soundscan hasn't released numbers for digital streaming from the year yet, but many theorize that those stats will explain the drop off. The numbers from the first half of the year indicate that streaming was up more than 24 percent. That number certainly seems to outweigh the 5.7 percent drop in digital sales, but it will take some serious Nielsen reporting to find out if the cash value of increased streaming covers the decrease in downloads.
In the relative scheme of things, the serious drop off in digital track sales makes the drop in digital album sales seem less painful. There was only a 0.1 percent decrease in sales, falling from 117.7 million albums sold during 2012 to 117.6 during 2013. CD sales continued to fall, dropping another 14.5 percent.
Some good news, albeit not good enough to save the music industry: Vinyl sales continued to rise, growing 32 percent. Still, that's only around 6 million records.
