US albums sales have fallen to another historical low, reports Nielsen Soundscan.
Last week’s total figure of 4.25m is the lowest recorded by Nielsen since it began collecting data in 1991, beating the previous all-time low of 4.49m which occurred in October last year.
The soundtrack for Disney’s new film Frozen was the biggest selling record of the week – achieving that dubious distinction after shifting just 86,000 copies.
As a comparison, Nielsen points out that the record week for sales in the US since the early Nineties happened in the December of 2000, when a cool 45.4 million albums flew off the shelves in a week. That year, over 785m LPs were sold in the States, again way ahead of the confirmed total for 2013, which was set at around 289m.
The UK is suffering a similar slump on the album format, with sales dropping to the tune of 6.4% year-on-year in 2013. There was better news for vinyl however, with initiatives such as Record Store Day helping sales on that format surge by 101%.
