Digital music sales have stalled at an alarming rate in the USA with sales going backwards during 2014 for the first time ever.
According to Nielsen Music, digital song sales decreased by 12% in 2014 to 1.1 billion down from 1.26 billion in the previous year.
Digital album sales went backwards by 9% dropping to 106.5 million sales down from 117.6 billion sales in 2013.
Albums (both physical and digital) dropped 11% in total from 289.4 million sales in 2013 to 257 million in 2014.
However the good news spin is that vinyl album sales increased by a massive 52% albeit on low figures of 9.2 million in 2014 compared to 6.1 million in 2013.
The drop is sales is due to the increase in streaming. Overall On-Demand Streams were up 54% in 2014 to 164 billion streams compared to 106 billion in the previous year.
“Digital music consumption continues its robust growth, with On-Demand streaming up 54% over last year and 164 billion song streams being played in 2014 ,” says David Bakula, SVP Industry Insights, Nielsen Entertainment. “Although overall music sales are showing declines, Vinyl album sales were up 52% in 2014, shattering last year’s record-setting total by more than 3 million LPs. In 2014, Vinyl album sales accounted for more than 6% of all physical albums sales.”
The biggest selling album of the year in the USA for 2014 was Taylor Swift ‘1989’ with 3,661,000 sales.
Pharrell Williams had the biggest selling song of 2014 with 6,455,000 sales.
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