Digital music reigns
For the first time ever, in 2011, sales of digital music overtook CDs and other forms of physical music by volume on the US market. According to figures released by Nielsen SoundScan in conjunction with Billboard magazine, digital music accounted for 50.3 percent of all music purchased last year. The US is well ahead of […]
For the first time ever, in 2011, sales of digital music overtook CDs and other forms of physical music by volume on the US market. According to figures released by Nielsen SoundScan in conjunction with Billboard magazine, digital music accounted for 50.3 percent of all music purchased last year. The US is well ahead of the UK and the rest of Europe in the digital music stakes, and as many as one in three albums sold in the country is of the downloadable kind, while sales have increased by 8.4 percent compared with the number reached in 2010.
Meanwhile, in the UK, digital music only racks up figures of less than a quarter of total music sales, although downloads of individual tracks far exceed the purchase of CD singles.
