Digital Sales Growth Continues
The digital music market appears to be going from strength to strength. Total singles sales for 2010 were a record breaking 161.8 million, up to approximately the beginning of December. Digital single sales accounted for 98.7% of this. Singles sales for 2011 are set to eclipse this figure with digital sales accounting for 99.6%.
Although artists total album sales are down 1.4% on last year, digital album sales are continuing on an upward trend. Figures for the end of 2010 show that a total of 13m digital albums had been sold from January through August compared to 16.2m for the same period this year. This continues from figures of 9.6m and 6.1m for the same period in 2009 and 2008 respectively.
It appears that the decline in the sales of the physical format is responsible for the overall decline in album sales. This is due to the fact that the physical format accounts for a much higher percentage of album sales compared to single sales, which are now almost exclusively digital.
The percentage of physical albums being sold, however, is steadily decreasing; from 89% in 2009, to 84.4% in 2010, and now 74.1% so far in 2011. This would suggest that as this percentage edges closer to a 50% share, the exponential increase in digital sales will see a plateau and subsequent increase in overall album sales in the future.
This post was written by Pete Shorrock.
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