US album and digital song sales down in H1 2014
According to Nielsen SoundScan’s mid-year report, US album sales are down 15% while digital song sales have fallen by 13%. A total of 120.9 million albums and 593.6 million digital songs were sold by the week ending June 29, the halfway point of SoundScan’s tracking year. Last year’s sales were 142 million and 682.2 million respectively.
Disney’s Frozen soundtrack is the biggest-selling album, having sold 2.7 million copies. Happy by Pharrell Williams (pictured) has sold 5.6 million, leading as the year’s biggest-selling digital song.
2014 is the third year in SoundScan’s history, dating back to 1991, where only one album has sold more than a million at the year’s mid-way point. It is also the third year in a row that this happened.
Justin Timberlake’s The 20/20 Experience was the biggest selling album at the same point last year, with 2.04 million sales.
High School Musical was the last soundtrack to lead mid-year sales figures, having sold 2.6 million by this point in 2006.
38 songs have been sold a million times this year compared to 51 last year, while 12 songs have sold at least two million, versus 13 one year ago.
Source: Music Week
