BigChampagne's Ultimate Chart (a/o February 3rd):
1. “What Doesn't Kill You (Stronger),” Kelly Clarkson
2. “Turn Me On,” David Guetta
3. “Set Fire to the Rain,” Adele
4. “Rack City,” TYGA
5. “Good Feeling,” Flo Rida
6. “Young, Wild & Free,” Snoop Dogg & Wiz Khalifa
7. “We Found Love,” Rihanna
8. “Sexy and I Know It,” LMFAO
9. “Domino ,” Jessie J
10. “International Love ,” Pitbull
Like many of its global peers, Canada is working through its own issues of piracy and cultural preservation. That picture also includes a downturn in recorded music sales.
But how bad? According to details disclosed by Nielsen Soundscan at Canadian Music Week on Thursday, album sales slid 2.2 percent last year to 35.1 million units, part of a broader slide over the past few years. Nielsen Company senior vice president of Analytics & Client Relations David Bakula noted that album sales have been "down about 20 percent over the last four or five years."
But the real number is probably worse. The calculation relies on 'TEAs,' or track-equivalent albums. Instead of a straight-ahead album count, the TEA aggregates ten individually-sold songs and treats them as an album unit, a debatable approach.
On the digital front, Canada also has a familiar problem. According to the stats, a 'record' 56 million digital tracks were purchased in 2009, an increase of nearly 40 percent. Additionally, digital album sales accounted for 13.6 percent of total album sales. That is up from 9 percent during the previous year, though digital formats are failing to compensate for broader physical declines. By comparison, the digital album percentage in the US was 20.6 percent last year.
And vinyl? Different country, same story. "Vinyl sales were huge in percentage terms, but really less than a quarter percent of all sales were vinyl," noted Vanessa Thomas, SVP of Sales at Nielsen Music.
Report by publisher Paul Resnikoff in Toronto.
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