Vinyl sales hit a historical high last year as US music purchases climbed 2.1 percent year on year and digital sales accounted for 40 percent of total US music purchases, Nielsen SoundScan confirmed today, up from 32% in 2008.
The news follows an August 2009 NPD Group report which confirmed iTunes-purchased songs now account for 25 percent of the overall music market--both physical and digital - in the U.S..
(During the first half of 2009, iTunes itself snagged a 69 percent share of the overall digital music arena, trailed far behind by Amazon.com with 8 percent - this may have changed but we haven’t yet sourced recent relevant data).
Nielsen also note that 10 billion music purchases were made in the US during the last decade (ie, music is not dead). The researchers also provided a dizzying selection of statistics, confirming an 8.3 percent
