Album Sales Hit Another All Time Low

Album Sales Hit Another All Time Low

Could someone ask Adele to hurry up with that new album? Because the music business needs it now more than ever. Billboard reports that the U.S. record-buying public paid money for just 3.97 million albums last week, which means record sales for this week are the lowest they’ve ever been in a single week since Soundscan started keeping track of these things in 1991. (Records are incomplete, but it seems like you’d have to go back to around time time of the phonograph’s invention to find sales that low.) Digital sales, which were keeping the industry afloat for a little while there, have plummeted; they’re down 11.7% thus far this year. In that Billboard piece, a series of industry insiders blames the rise of streaming services for the decline in physical sales. Apparently, people just don’t mind listening to Spotify ads, which is good news for Spotify (until something else comes along) and bad news for everyone else. But hey, maybe Disney will make Frozen 2!

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