The world may end this year, but at least the music will go on. Nielsen and Billboardreleased their 2011 Music Industry Report and the news is finally good: Total album sales increased for the first time since 2004 and digital sales finally beat out physical music sales for the first time, in units at least.
The information for the report was gathered from Nielsen SoundScan, a data information system that tracks music sales, streams, downloads and other types of acquisition. The information includes hard copy sales and sales data from major retailers such asAmazon.com as well as Nielsen BDS, a music performance monitoring service.
- Total album sales hit 330.6 million units, compared to 326.2 million in 2010. That’s an increase of 1.3%. That may seem small but considering sales have been on a slide since 2004, any improvement is a big deal.
- Digital music sales beat out physical music sales (CDs, vinyl, etc.), accounting for 50.3% of all music purchases, in units, in 2011.
- Digital sales hit 1.27 billion units. This is a new record for digital sales and an increase of 8.4% from 2010.
- Physical album sales (228 million) declined 5% since 2010. This is actually an improvement over last year when physical sales decreased 19.5% from 2010 to 2009.
- Vinyl hit a new record with 3.9 million sales in 2011. That’s 1.1 million more sales than the previous record, set in 2010.
- Music streaming — collected via Nielsen BDS — wasn’t nearly as high as digital or physical sales, but ranked high in the report. Lady Gaga was the most streamed artist with more than 135 million streams while “Super Bass” by Nicki Minaj was the most streamed songs with nearly 85 million streams.
- It was a good 2011 for jazz, New Age and electronic music which grew (in terms of sales and play) by double digits. Jazz grew by 26%, New Age was up 16% and electronic music rose 15%.
- Digital album growth also favored the underdog. Rap and Electronic digital album sales both increased by 42%. This is especially impressive given the large online and bootleg culture in both genres.
- Big Winners in 2011: Lady Gaga may have the most streams but Adele ruled the year: Adele had the best selling album, 21, with 4 million physical sales and 1.8 million digital sales. She had the best selling Internet album (321,000), the best selling digital song, “Rolling in the Deep” (5.8 million) and the most-played song on the radio, also “Rolling in the Deep” with 658,000 detections.
