How are Canadian music sales weathering COVID-19 this week? Let’s take a look.
Once again, Nielsen Canada’s weekly stats on Canadian music sales and streams paint a mixed picture for the industry. Here’s how things look in the age of coronavirus.
- Total album sales are down 38.5% from where they were at this point in 2019.
- CD sales are 53.3% lower.
- Digital albums are down 21.9%
- Digital tracks are softer by 26.8%
- Vinyl has dropped by 26.7% year-over-year
- On-demand audio streaming is up by 16.6%.
- Alberta continues to lead the way when it comes to sales drops from 2019 (-50.5%).
That things aren’t great vs. a year ago isn’t much of a surprise. But what if we zoom in on the week-to-week numbers for 2020?
- Total album sales have increased by 8.1% since the previous week.
- CDs are up 2.5%
- Digital albums are ahead by 15.5%
- Digital tracks are up 4.6%.
- Vinyl is down by 4.9%.
- On-demand audio streams are basically flat (-0.7%, 1.987 billion streams in the country last week)
So while the year-over-year suck, there are signs of improvement week-to-week. Fingers cross.