Country Music Sales Down

In the last week of September (the end of the third quarter), Country album sales were down 16.7 percent, while overall album sales were down 12 percent. Around this time last year, Country album sales were down 26.1 percent.  Somehow, Country Music is falling behind other genres. By the end of September 2008, Country digital album sales were up 22 percent, but overall digital album sales from the second quarter were up 30 percent. The growing difficulty for Country Music sales compared to most other genres is seen in the ratio of digital Country Music purchases to Country album CD sales. In order for Country Music to keep up with the other genres, the amount of digital sales will need to increase. Digital music is in high demand, but Country Music is having trouble keeping up with the innovations that accompany music sales.  As a whole, Country Music is not converting to digital sales fast enough to keep up with other genres. Fans of Country Music are not exactly rushing to adapt to the digital sales of music either and are more likely to buy albums on CD than fans of about any other genre. Country labels are also not making any extreme efforts to insist that Country fans make the switch to buying their music digitally. Actually, the labels are benefitting from the fan’s preference of owning hard copies of music. If Country fans were to demand digital music over CDs, the Country labels could potentially take a big hit. Wal-Mart album sales of artists such as Carrie Underwood and the Target album sales of Tim McGraw and Taylor Swift help to keep the physical sales of Country Music high, while Country labels are making more efforts to embrace the digital advances in music sales. Unfortunately, however, Country Music sales have slipped throughout the past nine months.  However, sales may increase in the last quarter of 2008 with new album releases from artists like Little Big Town, Blake Shelton, Taylor Swift and Trace Adkins, to name only few.The top selling Country albums in the past two years were albums belonging to Country crossover artists: the Eagles leading in 2007 and Rascal Flatts and Carrie Underwood throughout most of 2006.