Sales Growth for Digital Albums, Songs Buoy Industry in First Half of 2006

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on July 6, 2006 - 4:53pm.

Los Angeles - While physical album sales dropped 4.2% in the first half of 2006, strong growth in sales of digital albums (126%) and singles (77%) boosted the overall industry to a slight sales increase over the same period a year ago, according to The Hollywood Reporter, which cited Nielsen SoundScan data. Physical album sales from January through June totaled 270.6 million units, compared with 14.7 million digital albums and 281 million individual song downloads. Universal Music Group accounted for 31.6% of total album sales so far this year, followed by Sony BMG (23.9%), independent distributors (19.3%), Warner Music Gropu (15.9%) and EMI (9%).

http://tinyurl.com/hw7zv (Hollywood Reporter)