US album sales decreased by 12.7% in 2010, the same drop as the previous year.
According to Niesen SoundScan, Americans purchased 326,200,000 albums in 2010, a drop from 373,900,000 in the previous year. In 2008, Americans bought 428,400,000 albums.
The album statistic includes both physical and digital releases.
Digital album downloads increased by 13% last year, up from 76.4 million to 86.3 million and accounted for 26.4% of sales.
However, individual digital tracks flat lined with an increase of just 1% over the year. In the previous year, digital tracks had at 8.3% increase.
Physical albums sold over the internet from etailers also dropped, albeit slightly. Sales were down 1.6% but 24.9 million units were still ship by online retailers, accounting for 7.6% of all albums sold.
Vinyl albums had a healthy increase by percentage but we are talking small figures overall. Sales were up 14% for 2010 but that is on 2.8 million sales. (The Beatles ‘Abbey Road’ was the no. 1 vinyl seller for 2010).
The breakdown of new music vs catalogue was 57% : 43%.
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