The past 12 months has seen the first decline in digital music sales, since the iTunes Store was launched back in 2003. Digital track sales took the biggest hit, but a decline in album sales was a little more surprising reports Billboard:
Overall for the full year 2013, digital track sales fell 5.7% from 1.34 billion units to 1.26 billion units while digital album sales fell 0.1% to 117.6 million units from the previous year’s total of 117.7 million, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
As streaming music services continue to grow – including Apple's own iTunes Radio – it was perhaps inevitable that we'd begin to see such a change at some point. Numbers for streaming services aren't so easy to find, but with the likes of Spotify, Pandora, Rdio and Google to name but a few getting in on the action, there are some heavy hitters giving you access to more music for less money.
What about you though; did you shift to streaming from purchasing during 2013? Which service do you prefer?
Source: Billboard
