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Canadian Digital Music Sales Growth Beats The U.S. For Third Consecutive Year

By Michael Geist

Nielsen Soundscan released the Canadian music sales figures for 2008 today and for the third straight year it sings the same tune -- Canadian digital music sales are growing faster than the United States.  That's right - for digital music sales the market without the DMCA has grown faster each of the past three years than the home of the DMCA.  In fact, overall music sales also grew faster in Canada than in the U.S. (11.5% to 10.5% - both pretty good considering the economic climate).

The digital track sales growth for the past three years:

Year	Canada	United States
2008	58%	27%
2007	73%	45%
2006	122%	65%

Canada also beat the U.S. for digital album growth in 2008 (69% to 32%).  Traditional album sales dropped 8.5% in both countries.  While Nielsen Soundscan focuses on the declining album sales - akin to a car maker noting that sales of a particular model had declined even though overall sales were up - the real story is once again that the Canadian digital market is flourishing.  This leads to the same conclusion as last year - "the undeniable reality is that copyright is simply not the issue - the Canadian digital music market continues to grow faster than its U.S. counterpart and it is innovation, not government intervention, that will determine the digital winners and losers."

Full post as published by Michael Geist on January 07, 2009 (boomark / email).