There’s a glimmer of hope with Canadian music sales

The entire recorded music industry has taken a huge hit as a result of the coronavirus. This, of course, extends all the way down to stores and online retailers.

To put things in perspective, overall album sales in the country are down 38.3% from this point last year, drawn lower by a 52.3% drop in CD sales. Digital albums are also down (-22.6%) as are digital tracks (-28.6%) and vinyl (-28.5%). On-demand audio streams are up 16.5% year-over-year.

Yes, that sounds dire, but if we zoom in on 2020, we see that music sales seem to be in a recovery mode. Overall album sales are up by 14.8% from the previous week, led higher by CDs (+24.4%) and vinyl (+16.9%). The only weekly decline was in digital track sales, which slid 4.8%.

One final note: The regions that have been hit the hardest by falling music sales are Quebec (-46.8%) and Alberta (-46.2%).