NEW YORK (CelebrityAccess MediaWire) — Nielsen SoundScan, the entertainment industry's data information system that tracks sales of recorded music product, has added new Digital Song Genre Reports to its service.
These reports compliment the Digital Song Genre Charts that were released at the beginning of 2010, in partnership with Billboard.
The new Nielsen SoundScan Digital Song Genre Reports feature a variety of new capabilities, including record label genre market share reports and detailed DMA (Designated Market Area) genre reports. Genre designations are a key component to understanding market – and broader – trends within the music industry, and the relationship between the various genres and music consumption.
“Nielsen SoundScan’s new digital song genre capabilities are an additional tool to help our label and retail partners market and sell music,” said David Bakula, Sr. VP Nielsen Entertainment according to the press release. “Genre data provides an important context with analyzing digital track data in terms of artist sales as well as the broader trends at both the label and national levels.”
Digital Song Genre Highlights for 2010:
Popularity: Rock is the most popular digital song genre with a 27.0% share, followed by Pop 25.4%, and R&B/Hip-Hop with 21.9%.
Catalog Share: Rock experiences a much higher percentage of catalog sales within the genre, with 72.4% of sales coming from catalog songs. In contrast, the hit-driven genre Rap experienced a much lower 33.9% of catalog sales within the genre, with the majority of sales coming from newer releases.
Nielsen SoundScan offers 27 digital song genres overall and 16 core genres in each classification – Overall, Current, & Catalog. Current includes digital songs released in 2009 or 2010; Catalog includes digital songs released prior to 2009. More than five million songs have been coded with genres to date.
Nielsen offers two levels of genre categorization – Core Genre and overall Genre. Core is the primary genre for any given song (a song may only have one core genre assignment) and overall Genre, which allows for digital songs to cross multiple genres simultaneously in order to better evaluate a song’s overall performance in the current market.
— Crystal Lynn Huntoon
