The NY Post reports total sales, including physical CDs and albums, digital downloads and streaming, slipped 3.3 percent year-over-year through June 30, to 227.1 million units, according to Nielsen/Billboard stats released Wednesday.
The decline is smaller than the 4.6 percent fall music labels tallied in the first half of 2013.
A 42 percent increase in on-demand audio and video streams helped to stem the slippage.
Meanwhile, traditional music streaming, as it had in 2013, was a bright spot for the industry, expanding unit sales 24 percent, the stats show. Music streaming jumped past digital downloads in 2013 for the first time, when it came to popularity among music lovers.
That continued in the first half with overall album sales falling 14.9 percent, to 120.9 million units.
The big winners were Disney’s soundtrack album “Frozen,” which topped the album charts with 2.6 million sold followed by Beyoncé’s self-titled album, which sold 702,000 copies. “Frozen” also topped the digital album charts.
Pharrell Williams had the top-selling digital song of the period with “Happy,” which sold 5.63 million copies and won the most radio airplay of the period with 571,000 spins.
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