Album Sales Continue to Drop, Yearly Gap Widens (via Digital Music News)

US album sales have been steadily losing steam this year, but now the situation appears to be worsening. Most recently, weekly sales hits 9.96 million units, a dip of nearly 5 percent compared to the same week in 2004.
Performance drops like those are now commonplace, though overall yearly sales levels are now starting to become a serious issue. Cumulative sales this year recently hit 415 million, a gap of about 10.5 percent below similar figures in 2004. The yearly deficit now stands at nearly 50 million albums, which offers a big challenge for the fourth quarter sales window.
Chart-toppers for the most recent period included Gretchen Wilson, Sheryl Crow, Three 6 Mafia, Toni Braxton, Kanye West, and Sean Paul.

Now, the glare is focused on the all-important 2005 result. Most recently, the RIAA released figures for the first six months of this year, which indicated that retail shipments had dipped 5.8 percent on volume of 326.1 million units. That is a disappointing result, and raises big questions about the long-term health of the physical sector. Globally, the picture has been somewhat similar. In a sales tally produced over the weekend, international trade group IFPI reported that physical product had dipped 6.6 percent over the same period. But digital sales tripled for the period, though so far physical sales represent a large majority of overall earnings.