Here’s our weekly check-up on Canadian music sales and streaming stats

October 13, 2020 Alan Cross 0 Comments 0 min read

Every Monday night, Nielsen/MRC issues its report on how things are going with music sales and streams. With the pandemic still with us, these numbers should give us an idea on how the industry is coping.

Let’s start with year-over-year comparisons. Here’s how things compare with where we were in at this point of 2019.

Total album sales, -37.1%
CD sales, -53.2%
Digital albums, -19.8%
Digital tracks, -26.0%
Vinyl LPs, -22.2%
On-demand audio streams, +16.7%

Now let’s trace things week-over-week.

Total album sales, +6.2%
CD sales, +13.4%
Digital albums, -1.6%
Digital tracks, -1.0%
Vinyl LPs, +13.4% (the effect of the second edition of Record Store Day)
On-demand audio streams, +0.2% (1.757 billion streams in the county 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.

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