Our weekly check-up on the health of Canadian music sales and streaming stats

August 11, 2020 Alan Cross 0 Comments

Every Monday evening, Nielsen/MRC issues statistics on how music sales and streaming are doing in the country.

Here’s how things look year-over-year (i.e. comparing today to the Before Times):

Total album sales, -37.5%
CDs, -53.5%
Digital albums, -19.6%
Digital tracks, -26.5%
Vinyl, -26.0%
On-demand audio streams, +17.1%

However, it’s more illuminating to look at how things are progressing week after week during the pandemic.

Total album sales, -8.7% from the previous week.
CDs, -0.1%
Digital albums, -13.6%
Digital tracks, -3.9%
Vinyl, -3.1%
On-demand audio streams, -3.3% (1.733 billion streams in the country last week)

Still a long way to go before we can declare a recovery.

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 38909 posts and counting. See all posts by Alan Cross