Digital Album Sales Up, Physical Album Sales Down

The music industry is hurting as fewer people go to music stores and buy CDs.  Digital album sales are becoming more popular, but haven't quite made up the slack:

The month of August — like, basically, every month for the past 10 years — has not been kind to the music industry.

Between August 8th and 14th, only 4.95 million albums were sold, the lowest weekly level since Neilsen Soundscan starting tracking sales in 1991. This past week, sales were up, but just barely: just over 5 million albums were sold, an increase of only 2 percent from the record low.

... album sales have been on a steady decline since their peak in 2000. Digital album sales are growing, but not fast enough to make up the decline in sales of CDs.

This is part of the reason I set up the Crimson River Quartet Digital Store last month.  More and more people are looking to download their music directly from artist stores rather than buy a physical CD.

And, it's working.  I'm glad to say that we've seen a steady growth in our digital music sales as people respond to our YouTube videos and other media.  The Digital Store not only allows me to put our current albums out there for download, but people can download individual songs or even the background tracks from the recordings so they can perform the songs themselves.  In addition, I created two albums just for the Digital Store.  One, The Rest of the Story,  has recordings of the group  that were never released on CD, and the other, Way Down Low,  is a compilation of songs featuring the bass singer (who happens to be me).

Check it out and pick up some good quartet music for your iPod or other .mp3 device.