Compact Discs Continue to Lose Their Shine

Shrinking, shrinking, shrinking sales

Link to January 7 New York Times article, "Albums by Swift and Boyle Top 2009 Charts, as Sales Continue Plunge".

Excerpt: The music industry rounded out a difficult decade with a difficult year.

For the year that ended on Sunday, a total of 373.9 million albums were sold in the United States, according to data from Nielsen SoundScan. That is a 12.7 percent drop from 2008, and a 52 percent fall since 2000, as consumers have continued to turn from CDs to less profitable — and often illegal — forms of digital music.

As sales plunged in the 2000s, music retailers have also taken a severe hit. Since 2004 the HMV, Tower and Virgin chains have all closed their American stores, and Trans World Entertainment, which operates F.Y.E., one of the last remaining music chains, said on Wednesday that it would close 137 of its roughly 700 locations.


Top 5 best-selling artists of the 2000s

1. Eninem (32,200,000)

2. The Beatles (30,200,000; this is not a typo.)

3. Tim McGraw (24,800,000)

4. Toby Keith (<23,000,000)

5. Britney Spears (<23,000,000)