SS: Album Sales Slightly Down, Digital LP Up 15%

[areyoureadytojump]

www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/industry/retail/album-sales-slightly-down-digital-lp-sales-1007972162.story

Album Sales Slightly Down, Digital LP Sales Up 15% So Far in 2012: SoundScan
October 03, 2012 | By Ed Christman, New York

U.S. album sales are down 4.4% to 218.4 million units for the first nine months of the year, fueled by CD sales dropping to 129.7 million units from 151.6 million units in the corresponding period last year, according to Nielsen SoundScan. While digital album sales are up 15.3% to 85.5 million units, the 11.3 million-unit gain from last year's tally at the nine month point is only about half of the 21.9 million unit decline in CDs.

Like digital, vinyl is also up dramatically -- a 16.3% increase to 3.2 million units from 2.7 million units. But it's still only about 1.5% of total U.S. album sales.

After nine months, Adele remains the leader in album sales with four million unit scans for her album, "21," to bring total sales of the title to 9.85 million units since its release in February 2011.

Digital track sales closed out the nine-month mark with 1.009 billion units. That represented a 6% increase over the 951.7 million units scanned in the first nine months of 2011.

One Direction's "Up All Night" has surpassed Lionel Richie's "Tuskegee" to move into second place for the year so far with 1.25 million units, versus the latter's 1.02 million units.

In digital songs, Gotye's "Somebody That I Used To Know' (featuring Kimbra) is the top selling song with scans of nearly 6.5 million units. Two other titles are over the five million-unit milestone: Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe," with scans of 5.8 million units, and Fun's "We Are Young" (featuring Janelle Monae), which has scans of 5.6 million units.

The Universal Music Group (UMG) remains the top U.S. album distributor with a market share of 29.83% in albums plus track equivalent ones, just beating out Sony Music Entertainment by one percentage point. Sony Music posted 28.84% for the first nine-months of the year in that album count.

If only albums are considered, Sony is the top distributor with 32%, versus UMG's 26%. The latter's 31.2% track share, a six percentage point lead over Sony's, is how the company retains its lead in album plus TEA.

Catalog albums continue to drive the U.S. business. The category enjoyed a 3.7% gain to 110.5 million units from 106.6 million units in 2011's corresponding period. Meanwhile, current album sales drop 11.5% to 107.8 million units from 121.9 million units.

While catalog continues to hold a larger portion of album sales than current for the first time in SoundScan history, its lead softened somewhat in the third quarter -- at midyear catalog was up nearly two percentage points higher at 5.4% for the first six months of this year versus last year.

[josh]

Maybe if all the big releases weren't still waiting to happen, then catalog albums wouldn't be in the lead. I wonder if Babel and stuff released last week are taken into account? I would assume so, but you never know.

With Taylor probably going 2x plat, 1D probably going 1x with the new album and possibly (not too likely but both albums could be big holiday sellers) 2x plat with the old album, plus lots of big, new releases later this year, catalog albums should be overtaken, I would imagine.

And I bet the fuel in digital album sales is due (a large portion, at least) to Amazon's discounting policies. I definitely have purchased quite a few albums from them at $5 or so. All No Doubt, P!nk, etc.

[Deleted]

4 things contribute to catalog success

- the music is better
- the death of an artist brings it back for a while
- anniversary reissues are popular and sell well
- older albums of currently hot artists such as Adele and Mumford

[HolidayGuy]

I like that vinyl still has a core (and increasing) following. I need to get me a turntable. :)

[areyoureadytojump]

Oct 4, 2012 14:53:15 GMT -5 @2m said:

4 things contribute to catalog success

- the music is better
- the death of an artist brings it back for a while
- anniversary reissues are popular and sell well
- older albums of currently hot artists such as Adele and Mumford

And all those $4.99 sales at Walmart, Target and Best Buy.

[areyoureadytojump]

Oct 4, 2012 14:47:03 GMT -5 josh said:

Maybe if all the big releases weren't still waiting to happen, then catalog albums wouldn't be in the lead. I wonder if Babel and stuff released last week are taken into account? I would assume so, but you never know.

With Taylor probably going 2x plat, 1D probably going 1x with the new album and possibly (not too likely but both albums could be big holiday sellers) 2x plat with the old album, plus lots of big, new releases later this year, catalog albums should be overtaken, I would imagine.

And I bet the fuel in digital album sales is due (a large portion, at least) to Amazon's discounting policies. I definitely have purchased quite a few albums from them at $5 or so. All No Doubt, P!nk, etc.

I think this includes Mumford & Sons.

Albums sales were down 5% last week and now 4% this week.

Jason Aldean should also go 1xp.

Then there'll be a bunch of albums that go Gold and eventually ship 1xp in 2013.

2013 has 13 sales weeks left!

[Deleted]

Actually, YTD album sales were down 4.6% last week, and they're down 4.4% this week. Not much of a difference, really, but rounding makes it seem as if they went up an entire percent.

[Deleted]

Oct 4, 2012 15:02:25 GMT -5 HolidayGuy said:

I like that vinyl still has a core (and increasing) following. I need to get me a turntable. :)

The use of turntables can be nostalgic. But I found the use of that as a music vehicle to be clumsy and not very practical.

It is all about the album covers and of course sound quality is pretty good as long as you don't play it too much.

Then try letting an LP sit on your shelf for a couple years then pick it up and try to play it.

[areyoureadytojump]

^So they rounded up last week to 5% and rounded down to 4% this week.