Country Fans Slow On Digital But CD Sales Increase

Some interesting info from Nashville's Music Row. It seems that country sales actually increased  8% from the previous week. This is probably a temporary bounce since the overall sales are down 17% from last year. 

Just to show how anemic CD sales are these days, Taylor Swift was #1 with her Fearless release at approximately 63k and her Taylor Swift CD in 2nd place at a mere 14.7k, Sugarland at 14.1k, Zac Brown Band at 13.2k, and Darius Rucker at 11.7k. These were the only CD's to crack the 10k mark last week!!  As stated in other posts, 10 years ago sales like these would get you dropped by the label.

But the most interesting part of the post is regarding paid digital downloads by Country fans. While the rest of the music world has a ratio of digital to CD of 17%, Country fans are at only 7.5%.  Regardless of how the sales are made, they're way, way down.  

Lack of shelf space, no star releases, unpopular music or ??? It doesn't matter what musical genre you're in, it's all about the same. Sales are at an all-time low.