Music rating service Nielsen SoundScan has reported the final music sales numbers for 2013, and they don't look pretty. Physical CD sales continued a decade-long slide, going down by 14% in 2013 (CD's still account for almost 60% of all music sales). However, the scary news for the music industry is that - for the first time ever - mp3 downloads were also slightly down.
The one bright spot in music sales was the continued increase in popularity of vinyl records, up 33% for the year. Vinyl still represents a very small percentage of total sales, but it has grown enough (to over 6 million units last year) that it is becoming routine now for new projects to be simultaneously released on CD and vinyl.
Music rating service Nielsen SoundScan has reported the final music sales numbers for 2013, and they don't look pretty. Physical CD sales continued a decade-long slide, going down by 14% in 2013 (CD's still account for almost 60% of all music sales). However, the scary news for the music industry is that - for the first time ever - mp3 downloads were also slightly down.
The one bright spot in music sales was the continued increase in popularity of vinyl records, up 33% for the year. Vinyl still represents a very small percentage of total sales, but it has grown enough (to over 6 million units last year) that it is becoming routine now for new projects to be simultaneously released on CD and vinyl.
Back in the 90s, the best selling album of the year routinely sold 5 million albums or more, but in 2013 only Justin Timberlake's The 20/20 Experience topped the 2 million mark. With 2.43 million sold, it is the lowest selling annual number 1 since Soundscan began tracking sales. By contrast, Beyonce showed she still has the power in 2013: Even though it was only available for the final two weeks of the year, her self titled album was the biggest selling album of the year by a female singer, with just over 1.3 million copies sold. Shockingly, only ten albums in 2013 sold over a million copies, a far cry from the days when there were routinely a few dozen platinum albums each year.
There are lots of reasons for the decline in music sales, from illegal downloading to an increasing preference for digital subscription services such as Spotify and Pandora, to even the emergence of YouTube as a source for music listening. But 2013 shows that the music industry is still struggling to figure it all out and that mp3 download services like iTunes, once thought to be the savior for the industry, have probably hit their peak of importance and will probably begin a slow slide like their compact disc cousins. Where we go from here will be an interesting mystery.
By Chris Rizik
See a listing of the year's biggest selling albums and songs
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