SoundScan Mid Year Wrap ’11

There are numerous ways to dissect the meaning of country music sales through the end of the second quarter 2011. But perhaps these few lines of Nielsen SoundScan code tell the story best…

Country Music Album Sales (Physical/digital)

2004—77,912,000 units
2007—62,696,000
2009—46,130,000
2010—43,718,000

As one can see, there has been a 44% country album sales drop during the six years from 2004 through 2010. So when we say that YTD the first half of 2011 is down only 1.8% (from the previous year), the above numbers might temper any joy you are feeling. Watching the country album business melt away, almost 45% in six years is painful by anyone’s yardstick.

The bleeding hasn’t stopped, but it has slowed. Digital album sales, which are included in the above totals are also rising as a share of total album sales. YTD country digital album sales are up 29.9% and the share of country albums that are purchased in the digital format has grown to 20.2% as compared with 15.3% a year ago. (All genre digital album sales are 32.3% of total album sales up from 27.4% at this time last year.) The difference between 20.2% and 32.3% makes it clear that a larger percentage of country fans still prefer the CD format over digital.

We should note that track sales are beginning to reach critical mass, even among country fans. Country digital track sales YTD 2011 are at 73.578 million. Dividing that total by 10 to create track equivalent albums adds about 7.35 million additional albums, enough to put the year’s totals in positive territory.

Scanning The Charts (SoundScan revised its charts after the first charts were released. The chart numbers below have been updated.)
Jason Aldean is on fire, in case you hadn’t noticed. His latest, My Kinda Party is No. 1 again this week with scans of almost 48k and total album scans of 1.45 million. Aldean’s “Dirt Road Anthem” is No. 1 on the Digital singles list, downloading over 127k copies this week, plus he has a total of five songs on the country digital tracks 100. Justin Moore’s strong second week sales slid back a modest 54% (less than expected), remaining above the 30k level and placing him at No. 3.

The Voice judge Blake Shelton, aka “Honey Bee” needs a separate paragraph to describe everything selling in his camp. Shelton’s Loaded: The Best of … package flies up 183% to No. 4 this week with almost 25k units, hopefully as a precursor to his new album, Red River Blue which hits bins next week. Shelton also has four digital tracks on the Digital Country tracks chart!

American Idol stars also finished high in this weeks country album stats, although they were missing when the charts first arrived earlier this morning. Scotty McCreery debuts at No. 2 with over 40k units sold and Lauren Alaina debuts at No. 6 shifting over 20k units.

Independent Country Album Highlights
>>Dolly Parton debuts at No. 11 with scans slightly below 11k;
>>Colt Ford (No. 20; 4.4k) and Aaron Lewis (No. 21; 4.1 k) remain in the Top 20.