Jan 02 2009
Digital downloads up, album sales down
The official numbers are out for 2008 from Nielsen. Album sales, including albums purchased electronically, are down 8.5 percent from the previous year, and albums bought on physical CDs down 20 percent. Not surprisingly, digital music downloads increased by 27 percent. However, this was not enough to compensate for the decline in album sales.
I’m not surprised at all. Personally, I don’t think I bought a CD at all last year. I did buy lots of digital songs from iTunes, and yes, that does include some full albums. As a music fan I still enjoy hearing albums in their entirety, but I think I am in the minority as many people just look for individual songs and could care less about an album. It works both ways, though. I also think many recording artists now just throw together “albums” that are just a collection of songs and don’t put any thought into making the songs relate to one another.
I will say I didn’t buy very many albums. My listening habits are changing and evolving as I’m sure many people’s already have. In addition to the albums, I downloaded a bunch of singles and I often listen to my iPod in shuffle mode. I also have the luxury of skipping songs or listening to just part of a song, then moving on. I swear my attention span has decreased significantly over the past few years. I never used to skip songs on a CD. In fact, I am actually surprised I was able to finish this post. But I did.
