More doom and gloom, which is just what you want on a Monday morning. Still, sun's out. Well, it is on the Isle Of Dogs, I hope it is where you are too. Anyway, back to the doom and gloom. US CD sales so far this year are down 20% on sales for the equivalent period last year according to figures from research firm Nielsen Soundscan - sales are down from 112 million in the first quarter of 2006 to 89 million this year. And while digital sales do continue to rise, researchers say that digital no where near compensates for the slump in CD sales.
It can be hard to directly compare digital sales to physical sales when dealing with albums, because digital music buyers tend to buy more single tracks than whole albums. For their purposes, Nielsen take every ten digital tracks sold as equaling one album. By that system, even if you take digital sales into account, overall album sales are still down 10% on 2006.
Commenting on the latest stats, US artist manager Jeff Rabhan told the Wall Street Journal that it was further proof that the recorded music sector was an increasingly less important part of the overall music business: "Sales are so down and so off that, as a manager, I look at a CD as part of the marketing of an artist, more than as an income stream. It's the vehicle that drives the tour, the merchandise, building the brand, and that's it. There's no money".