Billboard questions Reuters report and claims 5% rise in US digital market

Billboard has pointed out a major flaw with the Nielsen figures that Reuters used to claim a plateau in the US digital market. It ignored album sales. The Nielsen figures were based on track downloads only. According to mid-year Soundscan figures, digital album sales were up 12.7%. Using this sales data and assuming 11 tracks per album, total tracks sold increased 5.4% in the first half of 2010. Billboard also points out that Reuters fixed the original story and added an extra line: ‘when combined with the growth in digital album sales, overall digital music sales were up over 5 percent in the U.S.’ But by then the news had already broken. These are half year figures, Billboard claims that track downloads have further decreased by 1%, and that digital album sales were up by 13% on September 19th.Read more: http://tinyurl.com/338ld98