Swivel Business

U.S. Music Sales, 1975-2005: Vinyl, cassettes, and CDs

By c.a.joyce on Dec 28, 2006
Viewed 52395 times

Graph Table Map More Options

Time Scale	Data Aggregation
Yearly	Average High Low Total Count Distinct None

Year	vinyl	cassettes	cds

1981	295,200,000	137,000,000	0
1978	341,300,000	61,300,000	0
1975	257,000,000	16,200,000	0
1982	243,900,000	182,300,000	0
1979	318,300,000	82,800,000	0
1976	273,000,000	21,800,000	0
1980	322,800,000	110,200,000	0
1977	344,000,000	36,900,000	0
1983	209,600,000	236,800,000	800,000
1984	204,600,000	332,000,000	5,800,000
1985	167,000,000	339,100,000	22,600,000
1986	125,200,000	344,500,000	53,000,000
1987	107,000,000	410,000,000	102,100,000
1988	72,400,000	450,100,000	149,700,000
1989	34,600,000	446,200,000	207,200,000
1990	11,700,000	442,200,000	286,500,000
1991	4,800,000	360,100,000	333,300,000
1992	2,300,000	366,400,000	407,500,000
1993	1,200,000	339,500,000	495,400,000
1994	1,900,000	345,400,000	662,100,000
2005	1,000,000	2,500,000	705,400,000
1995	2,200,000	272,600,000	722,900,000
2003	1,500,000	17,200,000	746,000,000
1997	2,700,000	172,600,000	753,100,000
2004	1,400,000	5,200,000	767,000,000
1996	2,900,000	225,300,000	778,900,000
1998	3,400,000	158,500,000	847,000,000
2001	2,300,000	45,000,000	881,900,000
2002	1,700,000	31,100,000	903,300,000
1999	2,900,000	123,600,000	938,900,000
2000	2,200,000	76,000,000	942,500,000
more...	more...	more...	more...

Bling Compare

Sources: <a href="http://www.worldalmanac.com...">World Almanac 2007</a>, <a href="www.riaa.com">RIAA</a>

Music sales in the U.S.; data show units shipped, not including singles. —c.a.joyce

Comments (8)

Bill says

How about digital sales?
It surely figures into the decline of CD sales.

posted about 1 year ago

whitneymcn

whitneymcn says

Bill -

The RIAA didn't start reporting digital sales until 2004 (i.e. the introduction of iTunes, first time that there was a legal music download service that generated a meaningful amount of revenue).

The RIAA download numbers for 2004 - 2006 downloads are:
2004: 4,600,000 albums
2005: 13,600,000 albums
2006: 27,600,000 albums

But it's important to note that those numbers don't include single-track downloads, which the RIAA reports as:
2004: 139,400,000 tracks
2005: 266,900,000 tracks
2006: 586,400,000 tracks

For some additional context, in the best year ever for CD singles (1997), 66,700,000 tracks were sold...less than half of the first year digital singles number, which has been on a steep upward curve since.

I'm actually pulling together some more data on this topic, and will get it up on Swivel in the next week or so.

posted about 1 year ago

Rock says

Hey Whitney,

Nice graphy...how about adding key points in music history (in particular intro of Napster, shutdown of Napster, intro of itunes etc.)

I'd be real curious to see how those and other points tie into music sales.

posted about 1 year ago

Anonymous says

Napster launched in June 1999.

posted about 1 year ago

Jonas says

Singles are actually very important for the analysis of the graph above. Especially in terms of online music services. Is there anyone who got any data on singles sales?

posted about 1 year ago

Harry says

Heyy Joha, yeah i do have some info on singles. The CD's best year sold about 66 million CD's but in the first year the single was introduced, singles sold double the amount. Single are very important as it forces the artists to produce more quality songs and not just fill ins.

posted about 1 year ago

leon45

leon45 says

hey, where did you get the info?
riaa records only go back to 1989?

doing an essay on this, would be really grateful if you replied. thanks

posted 11 months ago