Another check on the health of Canadian music sales and streaming

July 28, 2020 Alan Cross 0 Comments 0 min read

As the country slowly opens up, what’s the effect on our music consumption? Let’s take a look at Canadian music sales and streaming stats. (Note: These numbers will be much different next week when sales and streams of Taylor Swift’s Folklore album are figured in.)

Comparing things to this point in 2019:

Total album sales, -38.1%
CD sales, -53.5%
Digital albums, -21.0%
Digital tracks, -26.5%
Vinyl, -26.3%

So, not good. Except for streaming, that is, which is up 16.9% year-over-year.

A more useful metric may be how things are going from week to week during the pandemic.

Total album sales, -5.3%
CDs, -8.4%
Digital albums, -0.7%
Digital tracks, -0.1%
Vinyl, -15.3%
On-demand audio streams, +1.6% (1.775 billion streams in the country last week)

Not great, but it could be worse. We’ll keep an eye on things.

Alan Cross

is an internationally known broadcaster, interviewer, writer, consultant, blogger and speaker. In his 40+ years in the music business, Alan has interviewed the biggest names in rock, from David Bowie and U2 to Pearl Jam and the Foo Fighters. He’s also known as a musicologist and documentarian through programs like The Ongoing History of New Music.

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