Album sales continued to decline in 2008 while digital music downloads soared.
Wired PR News.com – The music industry saw a dramatic shift in avenues for primary music sales in 2008, with a significant increase in digital music downloads as album sales slumped. As reported by the Associated Press (AP), the end of the year numbers for both, as released by The Nielson Co., showed that the total number of physical album sales was 20 percent lower at 362.6 million, than 2007 and the number of digital album sales increased 32 percent to 65.8 million.
The increase in the number of individuals purchasing single tracks as opposed to full albums has been stated to affect the profitability of the recording industry. As quoted in the report of Silvio Pietroluongo of Billboard Magazine, “You can see the overall unit sales as a positive, but their model is really built on album sales and that just continues to decline… Music consumption has never been at a higher clip, it’s just a matter of trying to turn it into revenue.”
Photo Credit: Stahlkocher
