Although CD sales have been declining fairly consistently over time, the death of the CD is actually one of the slowest on record. Vinyl sales have been increasing but it’s a smaller niche market. With the growing popularity of digital downloads, experts predict that 2014 may finally see the digital album sales eclipse CD sales.
According to Billboard, full-length downloads have only overtaken CD sales four times in the past, with three of these times occurring in early 2014. As of February 2nd, Nielsen SoundScan estimates that total album sales since the beginning of the year have reached 22.99 million with 11.18 million coming from downloads and only 11.10 million from CDs. 710,000 units of vinyl have been sold in the same period of time.
