Friday, January 4, 2013

Music Sales

According to this article, 2012 music sales (revenues) were up 3.1%. However, individual track/album purchases (units) were down 1.8%. So people are buying slightly fewer items at slightly higher prices.

These numbers do not reflect royalties/licenses/whatever from digital music subscription services, such as Spotify, Pandora, and SiriusXM. Given the apparent shift from individual item sales/downloads to streaming subscriptions, this could be a big number. So things don't look so bad.

In specific detail, physical albums (CDs) remain the single largest format, even with a 12.8% decrease in unit sales. Digital album sales increased 14% and sales of individual digital tracks increased 5%. Those are smaller increases from past years, probably reflecting the shift to digital music streaming services.

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