Music Row has some country music numbers today. Country album sales were down 16.7% through the end of the third quarter (last week of September). Overall, album sales were down only 12%. A sizable drop was likely for one reason: The Eagles' Long Road Out of Eden, a huge seller last year, was categorized as country. It was released in early November 2007 and sold very well through the end of December.

At this time last year, country album sales were down 26.1% versus the first nine months of 2006. In 2006, crossover hits from Rascal Flatts and Carrie Underwood carried the genre and set a sales standard that had no chance of being maintained.

Country digital albums were up 22% through September. I don't have digital album sales through September, but I do know that they were up about 30% at the mid-year point. That means country is most likely lagging behind the total market by at least a few percentage points..

Why is country's digital album sales growth so low? Country has lagged behind many other genres in terms of ratio of digital-to-physical sales. If country were following a growth trajectory similar to rock, pop or metal, it's digital growth rate should be higher than the market's average. Early stage growth is high as a percentage but low in terms of units sold. As growth in early adopter genres slows, it falls behind the growth rate for the genres that are slower to convert to digital. But that's not happening. Country is not catching up.

What does this mean? Country fans (a) are still slow to adopt digital music and (b) appear more content than fans of some other genres to purchase albums on CD. Country labels' efforts to induce digital participation are not bearing much fruit. Ironically, labels benefit from their fans' continued preference to the CD. If they start substituting an album purchase for free streaming or a la carte downloads more often, country labels' revenues are going to take a hit.

But country labels are playing both sides of the digital fight. Even though they are embracing digital more than ever, they are not hesitant to set up exclusives with brick-and-mortar retailers. Those exclusives -- e.g., Tim McGraw and Taylor Swift at Target, Carrie Underwood at Wal-Mart -- keep physical sales high.

As it turned out, country had a poor nine months even without higher physical-for-digital substitution. That's a problem.