Digital Sets Records But Album Sales Fall In 2012

SoundScan released its yearly report and it seems that 2012 brought us some surprises when it comes to record sales. Here's a brief outline of the year that was.

• Album sales fell by 4.4% from 330 million to 316 million. 

• Digital albums accounted for 37% of the sales, but CD sales still dropped by 13%.

• Digital sales were up 5% from the previous year to an all-time high of 1.34 billion units.

• Country was up 4.1% in album sales, rock (still the biggest selling genre) was up 1.4%, but every other genre slipped from the previous year, with jazz down 26% and classical 20%.

• The top album seller was once again Adele's 21 with 4.4 million copies, followed by Taylor Swift's Red at 3.1 million and One Direction's Up All Night at 1.62 million.

• In terms of individual track sales, most genres rose in sales, with world music increasing the most with 111%, EDM at 36%, and blues by 24%

• Gotye's "Somebody That I Used To Know" topped all digital sellers with 6.8 million downloads, followed by Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe" at 6.7 million and fun.'s "We Are Young" at 5.7 million.

• Vinyl was up over last year once again, with 4.6 million copies sold, lead by Jack White's Blunderbuss at 34,000 and The Beatles Abbey Road at 30,000.

• Rod Stewart's Merry Christmas, Baby was the biggest selling holiday album at 858,000, followed by Michael Buble's Christmas at 622,000. 

What's significant in these numbers is that it's increasingly obvious that we're in a singles world (as if you didn't know already), regardless of what the major record labels might want. Album sales continue to fall except in rare cases as consumers have increasingly decided that they want the hits and the hits only.

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