CRIA Reports Canada’s Music Sales Declined 35% in Q1

Following the largest-ever annual decline in
Canada’s music market – a 12 percent drop from 2005 to 2006 – sales of CDs, music DVDs and other “physical” music formats fell an unprecedented 35 percent in the first quarter of 2007 compared with the same period a year earlier, the Canadian Recording Industry Association reported today.

This comes on top of an almost unbroken string of declines since the widespread advent of unauthorized file-swapping in 1999 and the proliferation of CD and music DVD counterfeiting in recent years. Digital music sales, estimated at about 6 percent of the Canadian market in 2006, are falling far short of replacing lost CD and DVD sales.

“We’ve experienced sizeable short-term drops before, but nothing compares to the drastic numbers we’re seeing so far this year,” said CRIA President Graham Henderson. He cited the decline as a “wake-up call” for the federal government to rein in Canada’s burgeoning black market.

The impact of shrinking sales is being felt in almost every corner of the music business – by Canadian and foreign artists, music labels of all sizes, retailers and their employees. For example, CD album sales by Canadian artists fell 7 percent in 2006 compared with 2005, according to Nielsen SoundScan’s tracking of Canada’s top 200 albums. Top 200 CD album sales by all artists dropped 9 percent. Such declines have forced Canada’s music industry to reduce its workforce by approximately half since 1999.