Music Industry

Weekly Canadian music sales and streaming stats: 19 April 2021

As usual, MRC/Nielsen’s email featuring Canadian music sales and streaming stats appeared in my inbox Monday evening. Here’s how the recorded music industry shapes up this week, beginning with the comparison of today where we were at this time last year.

  • Total album sales, -16.5%
  • CD sales, -27.0%
  • Digital albums, -21.3%
  • Digital tracks, -24.9%
  • Vinyl LPS, +54.2%(!!!)
  • On-demand audio streams, +14.9%

Did you catch that vinyl number? In raw terms, 285,000 pieces of new vinyl have sold across Canada so far this year. Meanwhile, CDs have sold 618,000 units.

Moving to week-over-week numbers:

  • Total album sales, -4.5%
  • CD sales, -11.2%
  • Digital albums, +2.8%
  • Digital tracks, +0.3%
  • Vinyl LPs, -4.%
  • On-demand audio streams, +0.5% (1.900 billion streams in the country 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.

Alan Cross has 37874 posts and counting. See all posts by Alan Cross

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