Album sales have been on the downtrend for some time now, both physical and digital, as streaming continues its rise, but all in all according to stats from Nielsen Soundscan there are more people listening to music than ever.
In fact, 2016 is the worst year ever since Nielsen started to track this information in 1991 with the numbers showing a 16.9% decrease through the first half of this year. All in all, total album units dipped to just a hair over 100 million – down 13.6 percent from the last year. Album sales aren’t the only things that are falling, track sales also dropped over 100 million units from 531.6 million units to 404.3 units.
That said, more people are listening to music than ever as streaming continues to grow into the dominant platform. Between January and July 6th listeners streamed 208.9 billion songs which would be equivalent to 139.2 million album units – an increase of 58.7%
If you’re asking how much money that accounts for, Billboard has got you covered estimating $1.98 billion in 2016 so far versus last year’s $1.82 billion.
H/T: Billboard