News

Katy Perry Triumphs In Poor Year For Music Sales

8:47 a.m. · January 6, 2011 · by Nick Neyland

Here’s more proof, if it were needed, that the music industry is in ill health. Billboard has released the total sales figures for albums and singles for 2010, with an overall dip of 12.8 percent, from 373.9 million sales in 2009 to just 326.2 million in 2010. Sales of individual tracks, which had looked bright with the advent of the iTunes store, increased by just 1 percent.

The year’s top selling track was “California Gurls” by Katy Perry, which sold 4.4 million downloads, although Billboard notes that this would only have been enough to rank the song as the third best top seller had it emerged in 2009 (behind the monolithic Black Eyed Peas, who sold 4.8 million and 4.43 million copies respectively of “Boom Boom Pow” and “I Gotta Feeling”).

CD Sales unsurprisingly fell once again, with a decline of around 20 percent, but the good news comes in the digital sales market, where album sales increased by 13 percent. But this is a tiny morsel of good news that the industry is clinging to, as there can be little doubt that this was a very poor year, sales wise, for recorded music. For industry executives, new records by the Black Eyed Peas and Lady Gaga can’t come soon enough. 

[via Billboard]