What The Numbers Say

I guess that there's two possible views that readers take when they read an economic report about digital music sales. This is just my opinion, but it seems that most are totally disinterested, or what a blogger says about digital music sales can cause a mild fluctuation in the stock market. Either way, no matter how important it may be to share such information, it can come off sounding a bit dry or uninteresting.

This past week Business Insider reported that download sales had "plummeted," from just a year ago. This was the headline they used as they interpreted a report from Digital Music News, that there had indeed been a decline. The data was taken from a Nielsen SoundScan report that stated that sales of digital downloads had fallen from to 682.2 million from last years 698 million. You can clearly see that that's about 16 million or a difference of 2.3%. While that is a drop, you could hardly say that sales have plummeted.

In fact, Billboard just released a report stating that this is more a reflection that digital download sales are merely slowing in their growth rate. They go on to say that due to the increased interest in streaming music services, that this was to be expected. In actuality, digital album sales are up 6.3% for the first half of this year while single unit sales were up 1.6%.

Though some major label artists have already released their albums for this year, there are still many more to come, as most will try to release their projects in the fall. Starting in September major labels begin releasing albums as we head toward the holidays and the Christmas shopping season. The numbers above still place the industry on a pace to match or at least come close to the total digital sales of 2010.

While none of this may make for an exciting read, it does serve to put things into perspective. There's no volatility here, at least that I can see. There seems to be enough room for everyone. It might even be possible that the prediction I read not long ago about 2016 being a big year for the music industry, at least the digital aspect of it, may yet come true.