Digital music sales are shrinking while vinyl sales are growing

In recent years, legal digital music downloads have been rapidly growing in popularity, but a recent report from Nielsen has revealed that paid downloads for albums and songs have declined by 9% and 12% respectively. On the other hand, the sales of vinyl music have actually increased significantly, having sold more in 2014 than any year since 1991, which is when sales records started being kept.

 A couple of years ago, the download of music (at least legally) was pretty high and climbing, but according to a recent report from Nielsen, it looks like music downloads are actually on the decline. The latest numbers gathered by Nielsen have revealed that paid downloads for albums and songs have declined by 9% and 12% respectively. However interestingly enough despite the decline in paid music downloads, Nielsen found that the sales of vinyl music have actually increased. For 2014, vinyl sales were at 9.2 million which is a 52% increase from 2013 and the highest ever since SoundScan had started tracking its sales from back in 1991.