Music Industry

Canadian music sales and streaming stats for the first week of 2021

As usual, MRC/Nielsen’s weekly round-up of music sales and streams popped into my inbox Monday evening. What does the first week of the new year look like? Let’s begin with comparing things to the first week of January 2020.

  • Total album sales, -27.7%
  • CD sales, -55.3%
  • Digital albums, -12.2%
  • Digital tracks, -28.1%
  • Vinyl LPs, +26.6%
  • On-demand audio streams, +7.2%

What about week-over-week? Glad you asked. This is how last week compared to the week before (i.e. the last chart week of 2020):

  • Total album sales, -13.1%
  • CD sales, -12.6%
  • Digital albums, -26.2%
  • Digital tracks, -27.3%
  • Vinyl LPs, +35.6% (Healthy!)
  • On-demand audio streams, -4.7% (1.629 billion streams in the country last week).

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.

Alan Cross has 37925 posts and counting. See all posts by Alan Cross

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