Digital Downloads Drive A Music Industry Recovery

According to Nielsen Soundscan report, US music sales have increased by 1.6% over the course of this year. The report gives the credit for the rise, unsurprisingly, to digital music sales, which in terms of albums was up 16.8% and in terms of individual tracks was up 9.6%. As for physical media, CDs were down by 8.8%, but Vinyl increased by 37%, although they only account for 1.2% of sales. Nielsen interestingly suggests the arrival of the Beatles on iTunes as a key reason, pointing to a dramatic increase  starting from when it was released on iTunes. As for the most popular genre’s, Rock had the greatest market share in album sales whilst Pop was the most popular for digital tracks.