CD sales accounted for 80% of the 428 million units sold in 2008 (from all media).
In comparison there were just under a billion units sold in 1999 and the backstreet boys had the biggest album with over 16 million copies. Last year the top seller, Lil Wayne only sold 2.8 million. It took the b-boys just over a week for comparable sales at the peak of the market.
If I'm not mistaken, Norah Jones first album was the last to break the 10 million barrier.
Total units sold started dropping at an annual compounded rate of 6%/year in 1999 through 2004. With the introduction of iTunes in 2003, "album substitution" started to take hold and the decline accelerated. Albums were being replaced by single track downloads on iTunes at a rate of roughly 1.4 downloaded tracks per CD album. With an average of 12 tracks per cd.. that's an 88% drop in per unit sales (1.4 tracks are around $1 on iTunes vs. $16-$20 for the CD album).
The music industry is alive and well but the record industry has basically been obliterated.
I don't understand why would people en masse download only one song from album. The rest have to be a real crap.
I can sometimes listen to a single song without looking at the rest, but that account for something like 5% of my listen, the staple being albums, of course.
It is a direct result of pushing out pop crap to sell singles. The majority of the artists the industry markets are pop artists that want a hit single. That is what they push for that is what they get. If they would get behind real artists and market them and their work album sales would increase.
Look at the top charts for singles. Pick any artist in the top 10. Go somewhere you can preview the entire album and then ask yourself if you would buy it.
Another interesting surprise is that CDs are still bringing in close to the gross $ volume of cassettes at their peak. The music industry got fat partly on global sales, but also partly because they were making such a huge margin on CDs, even though they were cheaper and took up less shelf space than records.
When I was a techno DJ I spent a lot of money on both vinyl and CDs in my preferred genre (I was happy to support tiny niche labels), but I bought all my mainstream music on used CDs - they usually played fine and it was a lot cheaper. I would never have done this when vinyl was king and have never bought a cassette, ever.
