Nielsen Music / MRC Data has published its mid-year report on the Canadian music market, revealing that despite the Covid-19 pandemic, total audio consumption rose by 5.7% in Canada in the first half of 2020.
That’s based on the research firm’s formula blending album and track sales with on-demand audio streams. Breaking that down, Canadians streamed 42.2bn on-demand audio tracks in the first half of this year, up by 16.7% year-on-year.
That was enough to outweigh a sharp decline in total album sales (down 38.4% to 3.1m units for digital and physical combined) and a 26.6% drop in digital track sales.
There’s also a sign of the impact of the Covid-19 lockdown on the previously-buoyant vinyl market: vinyl LP sales in Canada were down 26% in the first half of this year to 311k units.
As elsewhere in the world, the coronavirus has sparked growth in listening to older catalogue music: that category accounted for 62% of total consumption in Canada in the first six months of 2020, up from 59% a year ago. You can read the full report here.
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