DigitalMusicSales
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Billboard: Digital music sales decrease for the first time ever, vinyl continues to grow
It was inevitable: After years of highs and then a plateau, digital music sales saw their first decrease in 2013. Last year, digital song purchases dropped almost six percent according to a Billboard report, while digital album sales dropped 0.1 percent. Compact discs continued their downward spiral as well, and took a 14.5 percent loss. On the flip side, pure analog music (read: vinyl) showed an increase of 31.9 percent -- representing a full two percent of music sales. Until Nielsen's SoundScan report for streaming hits, however, we won't know how much of an impact the likes of Spotify or Rdio are having on purchases. We have a hunch it'll be rather telling. [Image credit: karola riegler photography/Flickr]
Walmart closing down its digital music store
Walmart is shuttering its digital music store on August 29, the company announced this week. The store was introduced to the public on March 23, 2004, and made a valiant effort at competing with iTunes, often offering up songs for even cheaper than Jobs and Apple were able to make them on iTunes. Unfortunately, Walmart stubbornly clung to the Windows market, offering songs as WMA files laden with Microsoft's DRM, unplayable on the iPod even as that music player saw astronomic growth. Walmart's always been a huge player in terms of music sales, but with digital music growth higher than ever and physical media at an all-time low, the company's influence has waned quite a bit. And closing down the digital store means they're more or less surrendering to iTunes' superiority. Not that Walmart itself is in trouble at all -- we hear they still sell a lot more than music.
Nielsen: growth of digital music sales flat in 2010
It's a bit early for the big music companies to start panicking, but it looks like the heyday of double-digit growth in digital music sales may now be behind us. That's according to market research firm Nielsen, at least, which found that sales in the US fell flat in 2010 after a 13 percent increase from 2008 to 2009, and a whopping 28 percent jump from 2007 to 2008. Nielsen is quick to point out, however, that it thinks this is a "plateau," and that it "doesn't mean that this digital consumption is going to drop significantly." It also still seems to be a different story outside of the US, with Nielsen reporting that digital music sales were up 7 percent in Britain, 13 percent in Germany and 19 percent in France.
