(Toronto) Who would have thought, just ten years ago, that the good ol ‘LP would mitigate the continuing decline in music sales in Canada?
The sales barometer, released Thursday by MRC Data, reports that 1.1 million vinyl records were sold in Canada in 2021, a 21.7% increase from 2020. That year, sales had fallen in due to COVID-19 and supply issues.
The latest figures for 2021 have also surpassed the record 1.03 million vinyl records sold in 2019.
The resurgence of the LP – the “33 rpm” or the “long game”, if you’re a little older – has actually helped slow the continued decline in record sales in Canada. Adding physical and digital sales together, they fell 12.1% last year to 6.1 million “units”.
MRC’s annual portrait of the music industry highlights trends, continuous listening growth and overall album sales.
One of the positive points remains the slight increase in physical sales, of 0.1%, to nearly 3.8 million units, taking into account vinyls, cassettes and compact discs (CDs). But CDs continued to fall out of favor with listeners in 2021: sales fell 6.9% to 2.7 million albums.
Digital album sales in Canada were also weaker, falling 26.9% to 2.3 million units, while sales of digital single tracks fell 25% to 18.3 million.
Much of the slowdown can be attributed to a continued trend in consumers to turn to streaming sites, which pay artists based on consumers’ viewing choices – and most typically earn less than if they sold their music. “Physical album”.
Greater diversity?
In terms of global trends, the report released Thursday indicates that for the first time in 2021, music streaming has exceeded two billion weekly plays. But this mode seems to attract an increasingly fragmented audience.
Over the past two years, the most popular songs have been played less often than the big hits of the charts in the past. The MRC firm suggests that as an increase in users comes a greater diversity of musical tastes, which can then steer consumers towards different genres and less popular artists.
For example, the most aired play in 2021 in the world was Levitating, by Dua Lipa, who collected 84.7 million pieces on demand. However, in 2019, Old town road, by Lil Nas X, had attracted 128.6 million requests, and in 2018, God’s Plan, by Drake, had accumulated 98.2 million.
Sales of physical albums have been dropping for years, but they had seen a significant drop in 2020, plunging 42.7% in the first year of the pandemic. On the other hand, vinyl had fallen “only” by 12.9% that year.