While music sales in the US have been rather flat for the last few years, it appears that the music industry has now climbed past the plateau.According to Nielsen Soundscan, digital albums are up 15% this year so far and individual digital track sales are up by 6%. In fact, Americans have already purchased more than 1 billion downloads this year and are on a pace to to break the 2011 record of 1.3 billion.
On top of that, vinyl record sales are up 16.3%, although that only equates to about 3.2 million units, a drop in the bucket compared to other music products.
So what can we contribute this surge to? Decreased piracy? Maybe. There's been great strides made against torrents this year and as a result fewer illegal downloads have been tracked.
Better music? This could also be the case. Adele's 21, for example, is still going strong, and a Grammy win in the beginning of the year helped propel that album to heights we've not seen in a while. Plus there have been fewer weeks where the #1 record was below 100k in sales this year.
What do you think?
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