14 DAY TRIAL // Nielsen SoundScan has released a study on Friday that indicates a soar or downloads in the detriment of actual sales of music albums in the United States of America. The study take into consideration only legal downloads, the users acquiring licenses to the music they download from the Internet. The metrics show that in the first half of 2006, album sales are down 4.2% in comparison with the same period of 2005. Mean while, sales of music via Internet downloads are up 77%.
The figures come to indicate a shift of consumer preferences from analog retailers to digital providers. Sales of albums under various media support formats have amounted only to 270.6 million units, while between Jan. 2 and July 2 2005 282.6 million products have been sold.
But there are some that put the decrease in sales on certain multi-platinum artists missing from the market until July. "Considering that you haven't had a 50 Cent to be the Pied Piper during the first half of the year or a Norah Jones the year before that, being behind 4 percent in album sales is really not that bad," said Geoff Mayfield, director of charts for music tracker Billboard.
On the Web, approximately 281 million singles were acquired through July 2nd, while in the similar time frame last year only 158.8 million single found their way to customers via downloads.