IT’S HALF EMPTY, FOLKS
The good folks who track sales are insisting that they have recorded more individual music purchases than ever in its history at the quarter-pole of 2007.
If you include all album and individual digital track sales as single transactions, what the good folks at Nielsen are calling “Overall Consumer Music Purchase Decisions” are up 19%, with buyers making more than 46 million more of them than last year.
Well, whoop-de-do.
Other factoids to mull:
Consumers have purchased 288 million individual digital tracks vs. 242 million at this time last year.
Overall Album purchases, including Track Equivalent Albums (total # of Digital track purchases divided by 10, in order to provide a like-for-like comparison with traditional Album purchases) are down 10% this year to 118 million vs. 131 million last year.
Sales of physical CDs have decreased 20% over last year, from 112 million in 2006 to 89 million this year.
CD sales account for 90% of Traditional Album sales (an Album purchased in its entirety, whether physical or digital).
Sales of Digital Albums have increased 100% over last year. Digital Album sales account for 10% of Traditional Album sales.
Sales of Individual Digital Tracks have increased 54% over last year.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled depression.
