The Big Picture posted some telling figures on the music industry today, including the fall in overall album sales and the rising popularity of the digital format (data via Pollstar):
- Total album sales fell to 428.4 million units, a drop of 8.5% (2007 = 500.5 million).
- Physical album sales fell 20% to 362.6 million (from 450.5 million)
- Digital album sales rose 32% percent to 65.8 million units;
- Digital track sales were up 27%, breaking the 1 billion mark for the first time at 1.07 billion.
- Total transactions rose 10.5% to 1.5 billion;
- All Genres saw losses: Classical music dropped 26%; Country fell 24%; Latin was off 21.1%;
- Vinyl album sales also grew with 1.88 million vinyl albums purchased for the year.
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