Nielsen: Sales For Digital Tracks Down, But Albums Are Up
From Net News
Sales Report For The First Half Of 2013
Digital track sales are declining in the U.S., but digital album sales grew again according to a mid-year report from NIELSEN SOUNDSCAN. For the year to date as of JUNE 2013, there was an overall drop of 2.3%, to 682.2 million sales, as compared to 698 million in the first half of 2012.
Individual track sales were down 1.34% to 356.5 million in Q1, with the decline rising to 3.3% in Q2, down to 325.7 million units compared to 336.7 million in Q2 2012.
MUSICWEEK.COM reports, “Big digital track sellers for 2013 stacked up as below:
* 51 songs with over 1 million sales (compared to 47 songs in 2012)
* 13 songs at over 2 million sales
* MACKLEMORE & RYAN LEWIS’ “Thrift Shop” (featuring WANZ) lead with 5.6 million sales
Million-sellers in the albums market are more sparse, with JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE’s “The 20/20 Experience” the only LP to surpass the milestone with 2.04 million units, although BRUNO MARS’s “Unorthodox Jukebox” is likely to reach the figure soon. ADELE was 2012’s only million milestone-surpassing act as “21” achieved 3.7million units.”
NIELSEN SOUNDSCAN found digital albums continued to grow, up 6.3% from 2012, to 60.8 million. Overall however, album market sales declined 5.6% to 142 million, compared to 150.5 million in the first half of 2012.
UNIVERSAL MUSIC GROUP led the labels in sales, with 37.6%, followed by SONY MUSIC and WARNER MUSIC GROUP. The share of Independent Labels was down from 12.7% to 12.1%.
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