CD album sales fell over 52% in last 9 years

Wed, Nov 10, 2010

News

With the rise of iTunes and fast proliferation of digital downloads, brick and mortar music outlets have been struggling to stay relevant while CD sales continue to decline. That, of course, isn’t too surprising, or even news really, but the following blurb colors just how fast CDs appear to be becoming a vestige from the past.

“Radio’s Future II: The 2010 American Youth Study” indicates that the average number of CDs an American young adult age 12-24 buys in a year fell 69.9% in the past decade, from 11.3 in 2000 to 3.4 in 2010.

And this phenomenon is not restricted to teens and college-aged consumers, either. In the same time period, adults age 22-34 reduced the average number of CDs they buy in a year from 11.3 to 4.3, a not much better 61.9% drop.

Not surprisingly considering the previous figures, total US physical album sales fell 52.6% between 2000 and 2009, from 785 million to 380 million. However, US digital album sales have shown impressive growth since first showing up in Soundscan tracking results in 2005 with approximately 35 million units sold. In 2009, that figure was about 70 million, representing roughly 100% growth.

Driving the point home, approximately 31% of all 12-24 year olds said they had downloaded digital music files from the internet in 2000. 10 years later, that figure has more than doubled to about 65%.

via Marketing Charts

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