A Look At 2010 Music Sales

One thing that puts the music business in perspective is a look at the sales. Although Nielson Soundscan's numbers aren't the be-all, end-all, they do provide a pretty good idea of what's going on in our business. Here are a few fun facts about US music sales for 2010. The percentages are against those of 2009.

  * Overall Album Sales - 326.2 million units; down 12.7%
  * Physical Album Sales - 240 million; down 19%
  * Digital Album Sales - 86.3 million; up 13%

  * Digital Track Sales: 1.172 billion; up 1%
  * LP/Vinyl Sales: 2.8 million; up 14%

  * Digital formats accounted for 46% of all music purchases; up 40%
  * Digital album sales accounted for 26% of all album purchases; up 20%

If you look at the sales numbers, you very well can get the feeling that the industry is heading off a cliff, but there is a bright side. There were over 326 million albums sold (240 million of them CDs), and over a billion digital singles. That's still a huge amount of music that's being consumed. So while the numbers may never be what they were, it's still a huge business that's far from dead.

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