Music Industry

Here’s how Canadian music sales and streaming stats ended (almost) for 2022

Luminate, the company that tracks all music consumption in Canada, has released what will be pretty much the final word on music sales and stream for 2022. The report ends on December 29, so the last two days of the year isn’t going to make any difference at all. Let’s just go with it, shall we?

Topline notes:

  • If we add up album sales (physical and virtual) and merge them with streaming figures, consumption of albums was up 11.2% from 2022. That translates into 93,169,761 units for the year.
  • Remove streams from the mix and album sales were down 13.8%.
  • Album sales were down in every province across the country with Saskatchewan seeing the greatest decline (19.9%). Ontario (-9.6%) and Manitoba (-9.7%) were the least worst.
  • CD sales dropped 14.8%. Canadians bought exactly 2,286,910 of them.
  • Slightly fewer vinyl LPs were sold in 2022, probably because of insane prices related to supply chain issues. Canadians bought 1,074,984 vinyl albums, which was 2.3% less than last year. However, because LPs are more expensive than CDs, I’m going to guess that the dollar value of LPs were higher than CDs.
  • Digital albums had a bad year, dropping 18.5%. Fewer than two million were sold, finishing at 1,659,172.
  • Digital track sales had a rough year too, falling 16.7% to 15,226,131.
  • On-demand audio streams was the big winner, increasing 13.4%. Canadians streamed 112,867,527,740 songs.
  • Last weeks stats are here

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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