A musical trend

Chart topping albums of 2011 led to an overall increase in the sale of music.


Reuters January 05, 2012

LOS ANGELES:


US album sales rose in 2011 for the first time since 2004, partly reflecting cheaper album prices and special offers as well as a booming vinyl market, music industry analysts said on January 4.


Album sales grew by 1.4 per cent from 326.2 million in 2010 to 330.6 million units in 2011, according to figures published in Billboard magazine.

The small increase in the world’s biggest music market is good news for the industry after years of declining revenues. “This can partially be due to the fact that albums are being priced a lot more economical for consumers, addressing their concerns that $10 for an album may be too expensive,” Associate Director of charts at billboard.com Keith Caulfield told Reuters.

US physical CD sales fell six per cent last year, but the 20 per cent increase in digital album downloads to a record 103.1 million made up for the losses faced last year, according to figures from Nielsen SoundScan. Digital song sales grew 8.5 per cent in 2011 to a record 1.27 billion downloads compared to 1.17 billion in 2010.

Vinyl album sales soared to 3.9 million copies versus 2.8 million in 2010. Caulfield called the growth in vinyl albums “crazy”. “It’s reaching out to two kinds of consumers, the older consumers who remember vinyl records fondly and may even have turntables and the younger consumers who can have a physical copy in hand,” he said.

Adele wins the race

As expected, British singer Adele’s 21 was the top-selling album in the United States last year at 5.82 million copies, which is the highest annual tally since Usher’s Confessions that sold 7.98 million copies in 2004. 21’s sales were twice more than the second-best selling album Michael Buble’s Christmas. Lady Gaga’s Born This Way, rapper Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter IV and country singer Jason Aldean’s My Kinda Party were in the five top-selling albums.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 6th, 2012. 

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