2012 marked a bittersweet for US album sales, it has emerged today.
Falling by 4.4% despite contributions from Pink, Drake and Miguel, overall sales dipped in the market while sales of digital items enjoyed- making digital outlets responsible for 37.2% of all album sales.
Details below…
Rising by 5.1%, digital songs sales rose to 1.34 billion units with the help of Nicki Minaj‘s ‘Starships’ (3,979,000 units) and Rihanna’s ‘Diamonds’ (2,092,000) while sales of Adele‘s ‘21′ and Drake‘s ‘Take Care‘ helped digital album sales hit the 117 million mark. Impressive, considering the 93.1 million units moved by traditional outlets like Walmart and Target.
As is to be expected, Rock & Country were the only genres to enjoy sales boost in the album’s department, as R&B saw a decline of 9.6% with 50.1 million units sold in the year, as Gospel faced a decline of 3.4% bringing it to sales of 22.9 million units.
Unfortunately, very few of R&B’s digits were generated by releases launched this year with the likes of Lauryn Hill‘s ‘The Miseducation’ and Usher‘s ‘Confessions‘ responsible for ensuring the genre did not dip further than they already did.
As it stands, none of the major R&B LPs launched last year have surpassed sales of 500,000 units, with some yet to even hit the 100,000 unit mark.