(CelebrityAccess News Service) – The state of the United States music industry through December 14 according to
Nielsen SoundScan:
* This year to date, overall music sales are down just 2.2% including
digitally downloaded "track" sales (digital track sales only started
reporting on July 2, 2003). Excluding digital track sales, overall music
sales are down 4.7% in 2003, compared to a drop of 12.9% in 2002 YTD;
* There have been 15.9 million digital tracks purchased through the paid
services (iTunes, Napster, Musicmatch, Rhapsody, MusicNet, MusicNow, Liquid
Digital Media and Buymusic), since Nielsen SoundScan began reporting legal
downloads on July 2, 2003. More than 1.3 million tracks were downloaded
this week (week ending 12/14/03);
* This week (week ending 12/14/03), sales increased by 34% over last week of
the Top 200 albums;
* CD Album Sales – that represent 96% of all album sales – are down just 3%
vs. 8.8% YTD 2002;
* All Albums Sales are down 4.7% vs. 10.8% last year, YTD;
* Cassette albums continue its decline with sales down 40.3%;
*Single Sales have dropped only 4.7%, compared to a drop of 61.5% last year; and
* Music video sales continue to climb with sales up 75.2% over 2002 (16.4
mil vs. 9.3 mil). This increase is primarily due to the boom in DVD sales.
DVD video sales have increased 103.9% over 2002 (15.7 mil. vs. 7.7 mil.). –Jane Cohen and Bob Grossweiner
