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SoundScan Releases Mid-Year Sales Data
July 7, 2006 at 2:02 PM (PT)
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NIELSEN SOUNDSCAN have announced their half year 2006 U.S. sales data for the 26-week period JANUARY 2, 2006 through JULY 26. Here are some important finding:
-- Total album sales are down 4.2% compared to 2005.
-- Overall music purchases in 2006 is estimated to break 1 Billion in sales by year end (the 1 billion sales plateau was first accomplished last year).
-- Overall Album Sales (including Track Equivalent Albums = TEA) are up 0.2% over 2005.
-- Mass Merchant’s share of album sales has reached 40% for the first time.
-- There have been more than 23,000 albums released.
-- Sales of new albums (48 million) account for 22% of total albums sold (albums released in 2005 accounted for 39% of total album sales in 2005).
-- 5 genres have seen increases in sales over 2005.
-- Non-traditional outlet sales (non-digital Internet, venue, alternative retail, mail order, etc.) account for more than 10% of total album sales (11%) for the first time.
In the digital realm, here's some interesting facts:
-- Digital tracks sales are up 77% over 2005 with more than 280 million sales (there were a total of 353 million digital track sales for the year in 2005).
-- Average weekly track sales are 10.7 million vs. 6.7 million in 2005.
-- More than 1.8 million different tracks that have been downloaded at least once.
-- Digital album sales (14.7 million) are up 126% compared to the first 6 months of 2005 (there were a total of 16.2 million digital albums sold in 2005).

