Music sales for the first nine months of 2012 are on track to break last year’s record figure in the USA.
From January 1, 2012 until September 30, 2012, digital album sales were up 15% compared to the same period in the previous year, Nielsen SoundScan reports.
“As we look ahead, it’s clear that digital music purchases—and consumption through streaming sources—will continue to grow, and that consumers’ appetites for digital music will change at the speed of technology,” David Bakula, Senior Vice President of Client Development at Nielsen said in a statement. “These trends will no doubt continue to shape the way that music is discovered, marketed, consumed and sold.”
Digital tracks have already passed 1 billion sales so far this year in the USA. Last year, 1.3 billion tracks were sold digitally in America.
Nielsen SoundScan started collecting digital music sales in 2004. That year Digital made up less than 1% of US album sales. By 2007, digital album sales reached 23% of total album sales. In 2008, consumers in the USA purchased over 1 billion digital tracks for the first time and in 2011 over 100 million digital album sales were recorded for the very first time.
The fastest selling album of the year so far in the USA is Mumford & Sons ‘Babel’. It will debut at no. 1 later this week with sales of more than 600,000.
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