Here’s How Far Physical Music Sales Have Fallen

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FIRST PUBLISHED 2017

Alan Cross writes:

The chart week–the period of time when music sales and streams are monitored on a weekly basis–runs from 12:00 AM Friday to 11:59 PM the following Thursday. Come Monday or Tuesday, I get the sales and streaming stats from the previous week.

For the past couple of years, I’ve been watching sales numbers for albums slip week after week after week. Back in the 90s, Our Lady Peace could release an album and see it sell 20,000 copies a week for months on end. Not anymore.

Looking at this week’s Canadian charts, P!nk is the only clear winner, selling nearly 60,000 copies of her Beautiful Trauma album, an amazing accomplishment in this day and age. But then we look at the #2 album in the country, Beck’s Colors. In its debut week, it sold just 3,800 units across the country. It was possible to squeak into the Canadian Top 10 by moving just 1,800 records.

And it gets worse. To make it into the Top 200, all you had to do was convince 110 people in a nation of 36 million to buy your record.

Let’s take a look at .....

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