Music album sales in the U.S. 2007-2014

The statistic shows annual music album sales in the United States from 2007 to the first half of 2014. In 2011, 331 million CDs, CSs, LPs and digital albums were sold in the U.S.

Annual music album sales - additional information

The global music industry generated 50 billion US dollars in 2012, thirty percent of which (around 15 billion US dollars) can be attributed to the U.S. music industry alone. Going forward, music industry revenue in the United States is projected to increase modestly from 15 billion in 2012 to 16 billion in 2017.

This projected revenue increase comes despite dismal statistics surrounding the sale of music albums in the United States. As seen above, annual music album sales plummeted from 500 million units sold in 2007 to just 142 million units sold by June of 2013. The fall in album sales was caused by the rise of illegal music downloading and trading. In 2011, paid music downloads and physical CD sales accounted for only 35 percent of all music file acquisitions. The remaining 65 percent of music acquisitions were accomplished through the use of digital lockers, hard drive trading, burning music files, or person-to-person file sharing.

Despite changes in the way Americans acquire music, US consumers still enjoy and value music industry products. Recent studies show that more consumers are choosing to use a legal alternative to file sharing—online music streaming services. Total unpaid music acquisition volume was down 32 percent from January 2012 to 2013, due to the rise of online radio services like Pandora and Spotify. Digital music revenue from subscriptions and streaming reached one billion US dollars in 2012, almost surpassing digital album downloads, which accounted for 1.2 billion US dollars in revenue.