MRC Data (formerly known as Nielsen Music) just published their data for the first half of 2021, and it paints a pretty rosy picture of the current music industry. Some of the highlights include vinyl sales jumping 108.2%, from 9.2 million in the second half of 2020 to 19.2 million units, and CD sales gaining 2.2% as well, with 18.9 million units sold.
Streaming continues to dominate, of course, with 10.8% growth. Americans streamed 555.3 billion songs across major streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music, while worldwide streaming jumped a total of 27.3% with 1.296 trillion audio streams.
Perhaps unsurprisingly is the continued decline of downloads, which dropped 26.8% to 12.92 million. Check out the full report over at Billboard.
