Nielsen: 2014 Digital Music Sales Plummet Compared to 2013’s First Half
Could it possibly be because the music industry is stuffing the top of the charts with retread crap rap, Disney pap, and pseudo-inspirational sap instead of new and creative acts? While we are at it let’s not forget the soulless diva clones, echolost microphones, and the muddy monotones passing as talent instead of artists with great skills lyrically portraying our lives.
On Wednesday, Nielsen Soundscan released its annual mid-year US music sales report, and it touted the biggest musical movers and shakers of 2014 to date. The soundtrack to Disney’s Frozen led the album charts at 2.7 million copies sold across all formats in 2014, while Pharrell Williams’ “Happy” led the singles charts with 5.6 million digital downloads sold this year. Yeah, there are exceptions but I suspect that the music business needs to revamp it’s models, someone’s got their thumb on those chart scales.
However, while the rest of the top-20 singles chart was full of million-plus selling songs, no other full-length album broke the million mark, and the total numbers compared to 2013 were drastically lower. Total album sales, combining physical and digital numbers, were down 15 percent to 121 million, and while Nielsen didn’t confirm how the album numbers split, the announcement of a 13 percent drop in digital singles sales was indicative that MP3s weren’t picking up the sales slack.
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