SoundScan: Downloaded Music Up 67%

According to a new report from Nielsen SoundScan, in the first 49 weeks of 2006, more than 525 million songs were downloaded. 2006 was a record-breaking year for digital downloaded music, but can the trend continue into 2007?

by Kristina Knight

Many in the industry believe music downloads will continue to surge in 2007 as iPods and MP3 players continue to gain popularity. If you take into account that music downloads increased more than 67% in 2006 there is room for downloads to continue to grow this year.

Here are some quick facts from Nielsen SoundScan: 2004 saw digital downloads reach 140 million; in 2005, downloads increased by 150%, reaching 353 million downloaded; in 2006 54 songs have sold at least 500,000 times. In 2005, only 22 songs reached that number, no songs reached it in 2004.

Rob Sisco, President of Nielsen Music said in a statement, "It is clear that digitally downloaded music is continuing to enjoy tremendous and growing consumer acceptance."

And it isn’t just single songs that are being downloaded. Entire albums are being downloaded to iPods and MP3 players more speedily than any year prior to 2006. 29.7 million albums were downloaded in 2006 compared with 14.5 million in 2005. Of the albums downloaded in 2006, 11 have sold more than 100,000 units digitally; only 3 albums did that in 2005 and none in 2004.