Canada: Nielsen Year End Music Report 2018

• Posted on 9 March 2020
• By Derek Antonio
• Posted in Charts, Music Consumption, Music Sales, Nielsen, Year End
• 0

Nielsen just released their year end report on how Canadians chose to consume music in 2018. Naturally of course we skipped right to the vinyl numbers as every record sold at Pop Music is reported to them.

Originally published January 29th, 2019.

Nielsen just released their year end report on how Canadians chose to consume music in 2018. Naturally of course we skipped right to the vinyl numbers as every record sold at Pop Music is reported to them. Here's our notes on the lengthy report. Expect to see the media pick up on this story in the days to come.

VINYL SALES

Vinyl records sales in Canada grew 27.1% in 2018 over the previous year. Canadians bought over 1,000,000 new vinyl records beating the previous record set in 2017 of 804,000 records. This data is only based on retail stores who choose to report sales data and does not include sales of previously-owned vinyl records. This is the 8th year in row of steady growth for the format.

COMPACT DISC SALES

Canadians bought 7.6 million CDs in 2018, down 26.2% from 2017. Canadians also bought way less digital albums last year, choosing to stream them instead. Only 5.2 million digital albums were sold in 2018, down 18% from the previous year. Similarly the same trend could be said for digital track sales, which also fell 22% from 2017.

STREAMING

Streaming reached new levels of critical mass in 2018, which buoyed a 13% year-over-year increasein total music consumption.

Leading the charge:

• 46.7% lift in on-demand audio streaming
• 39.4% bump in on-demand video streaming

WHAT'S DRIVING PHYSICAL SALES

Current albums: 46.9% (released in 2018)

Catalog albums:53.1% (titles older than 18 months)

Vinyl Sales Growth by Quarter:

Q1+1% YoY

Q2+41% YoY

Q3+18% YoY

Q4+40% YoY

TOP 10 BEST SELLING VINYL ALBUMS OF 2018 [UNITED STATES]