Every January, Nielsen SoundScan releases an annual report on the music business for the prior year, and every year in recent memory, the numbers have sung the same sad song: overall music sales are down, again, as piracy and other factors chip away at the industry’s sales numbers.
This year, however, there’s a glimmer of hope. For the first time since 2004, overall music sales are up. It’s an incremental improvement–album sales edged up 1.4% to 330.57 million units from 326.15 million in 2010–but it’s an improvement nonetheless, especially compared to the 13% dip in total album sales from 2009-2010.
“Now that the final numbers are in, it’s official that the music industry has a significantly positive year in the record books for the first time in seven years,” said Jim Donio, president of music business association NARM, in an email. “This year’s results can be attributed to a variety of influences, including more aggressive marketing efforts and offers, availability and consumer adoption of legitimate digital commerce models, the power of social media, etc.”
British soul singer Adele had the best-selling album, moving 5.82 million copies of her hit 21 in the U.S. alone; without her effort, the industrywide album sales numbers for 2011 would have actually been a tad lower than 2010. Adele’s opus sold more than double the amount of the No. 2 album, Michael Buble’s Christmas, which sold 2.45 million copies. Lady Gaga’s Born This Way rounds out the top three at 2.1 million.According to Billboard, which had an early look at SoundScan’s full report, CDs continued their downward slide last year, with sales falling by 6%; digital album downloads soared 20% to 103.1 million, up from 86.3 million in 2010 (including 1.8 million for Adele’s 21). Total digital song sales ticked up 8.5% to a record 1.27 billion, up from 1.17 billion last year.
Given this year’s improvement, it’s quite possible that history will show 2010 to be the music industry’s low water mark. For now, observers are simply looking forward to what the coming year holds.
“It will be exciting to see what 2012 has in store as we anticipate new music from established artists and speculate about which stars-in-the-making might be making critical and commercial headlines in the next twelve months,” said Donio. “Not to mention how products and services from familiar and freshmen players in the digital commerce space will continue to unfold.”