Last week I linked to the presentation Nielsen gave at this year's NARM conference and gave a few statistics (download PowerPoint file here). I've gone through the slides a bit more and wanted to share more information. It's not every day Nielsen is so open with its proprietary data, so it's worth another go around.

• Music accounted for 50% of the 825 million entertainment purchase transactions in 2006 (not value, just number of transactions). Home video accounted for 15%, books accounted for 25% and ring tones accounted for 9%. (Slide 4)
• 37% (220 million) of 2006 album sales were from albums released in 2006. In the previous three years, albums released in those years accounted for 40%. (Slide 8)
• In the first 16 weeks of 2007, digital albums accounted for 10% of all album sales (compared to 5% in 2006 and 2% in 2005). (Slide 10)
• The Dixie Chicks' Taking The Long Way, at 136,000 units, was the best selling Internet album of 2006. (Slide 14)
• There were 75,000 new release albums in 2006. One-third, or 25,000, were digital-only releases, and 95% of those digital-only albums sold fewer than 100 units. The 2,900 digital-only albums released by the four majors accounted for 40% of digital sales. (Slide 18)
• Less than 90 titles accounted for 40% of 2006 new release sales. About 1,000 albums made up 80% of all new release sales. Three-fourth of all new release titles sold fewer than 100 units. (Slide 19)
• In the last seven years, only two albums released in the fourth quarter, Beatles 1 and Backstreet Boys' Black and Blue, have sold more than four million units in a year. Both were released in 2000. (Slide 22)
• From 2004 to 2006, albums sales dropped 12%. Country has dropped 5%, alternative has dropped 19% and urban is down 30%. The three genres accounted for 50% of all album sales in 2006. (Slide 24)
• In 2006, 17 different tracks sold more than one million units. Zero went over one million in 2005. (Slide 29)
• In 2006, 2.8 million tracks were downloaded at least once and 650,000 tracks were downloaded only once. (Slide 30)
• The top 100 digital albums of 2006 accounted for 17% of all digital album sales. (Compare that to the info in slide 17). (Slide 33)
• Gospel digital track sales increased 143% in 2006, while Latin tracks were up 136% and country tracks were up 126%. Alternative rose only 83% and rap rose 93%. (Slide 34)
• In the first 16 weeks of 2007, the top 100 ringtones account for 36% of all sales. Total sales are 77 million ringtones that generated $193 million in sales. (Slide 41)

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