Music Sales Up, Album Sales Down

Americans purchased more music than ever before in 2008, but album sales, the most lucrative product for music companies, was down for the fourth straight year in a row. Music purchases topped 1.5 billion, 10.5% higher than in 2007. A purchase, as far as this report is concerned, can be any type of transaction that deals with music, so an album sale is the same as a digital download. Over 70% of the purchases were digital downloads, or 1.07 billion purchases, vs. 844.2 million last year. Album sales were down 14% to 428.4 million, and are down over 45% since the year 2000.

The report, from Nielson Co., shows a strong preference among consumers for individual track downloads, and clearly indicates that the concept of the album is in serious trouble. One indicator promised hope for the record companies: sales of digital albums were up last year, reaching a high of 65 million. Record companies are looking for high profile acts to raise the consumer interest in full-album downloads.

USA Today has additional information about the report and some of the stats from 2008.

Join Baratunde Thurston (left), The Onion’s Director of Digital and author of How to Be Black, for an entertaining look at creative social media campaigns in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. Other speakers include Morin Oluwole (Facebook), Tim Devane (bitly), and SocialTimes' writer Devon Glenn.   Register now.