Downloads may be on the decline in recent years, but not all aspects of digital downloading are plummeting. Nielsen Soundscan has release 3rd quarter figures and while some of the stats aren’t too surprising, others are.
Albums sales as a whole have taken a dip, but digital album sales have held on strong, only showing a drop of one-third of 1 percent. The area that has taken the biggest hit is track sales, which has seen a loss of about 100 million in sales this year. Coincidentally, streaming has increased by double, up to 232 billion during the first nine months of the year, thanks to services like Apple Music and Spotify being adopted by more and more users.
As far as artists go, Drake seems to be the most digitally downloaded in part to his If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late album, beating out Taylor Swift‘s 1989 in digital sales (T. Swift remains the top selling album of the year overall, though). The top selling track of the year? That honor goes to Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars‘ “Uptown Funk.”
Things can still change between now and the end of the year, but for a full breakdown of the ratings, check out Billboard‘s insightful article.