In six months we’ll be in the second decade of the 21st century but for the music industry it’s 1995 all over again.

I was in San Diego two weeks ago for the annual National Association of Recording Merchants Convention attended by physical, digital and mobile music retailers and we were treated to some special research statistics courtesy of Nielson Soundscan, sales data collector and reporter (Billboard) for sales in these formats to consumers.

Album sales, even when including digital (full) album sales, are now at levels comparable to 1995. It is important to note that from 1995 to 2000 album sales doubled, an amazing sales spike, so the fact that they are down 45 percent from the peak of 2000 pokes some holes in the premise that physical sales are down wholly due to the Web when it appears an unnatural spike also contributes to the decline.

And that likely has a great deal to do with the unavailability of singles and the eventual emergence of single-track sales digitally. Back in 1995, the major labels foolishly began to eliminate sales of singles to drive album sales only to have fans stop buying albums (post year 2000) from artists that are not “album” artists but rather popsters who, up until 1995, primarily contributed to music industry sales via the 7-inch single or the cassette single; remember that?

Impressively, digital track sales broke the 1 billion mark in 2008 and the top 200 digital tracks account for almost 20 percent of total track sales. 2009 is on track to recognize five songs with digital sales more than 3 million and more than 100 tracks with sales more than 1 million compared to just 40 tunes hitting digital platinum in 2007.

Streaming of hit music represents a great deal of online music listening and the top 5,000 songs have accumulated more than 5 billion streams to date, a staggering amount of impressions for those tracks.

While digital now represents 40 percent of total music sales, digital full album sales only account for 20 percent of full album sales with CDs just over 75 percent of the total. So, it appears when a music fan is ready to own an album they are still choosing the higher quality plastic disc.

It was interesting to discover online activity surrounding streaming and file sharing now eclipses radio on impact of music sales.

Statistics indicate consumers increasingly go to the Web to preview music because radio does not offer real variety or choice and sadly, too often, ignores top selling albums while championing unpopular drivel. More bad news for an industry already beleaguered by dramatic declines in ad revenue and struggling to fight off Performances Rights Royalty legislation.

Shopping habits are changing, too, with music sales at Electronic Big Box Merchants down significantly compared to smaller declines at Mass Merchants, yet, surprisingly, sales at Indie Music Retailers is on the rise.
Much of that may be tied to the resurgence in vinyl sales with total unit sales on track to cross 3 million units in 2009. Still, that’s only 1 percent of the total music industry but, this configuration is important to the indies since they represent 70 percent of that number.

The video game industry is now experiencing a similar sales spike like the one the music industry generated from 1995 to 2000, so the question everyone was asking was, is a comparable decline on the horizon for video games?

And from the “I told you so” department, out of the on average, 2 hours a day consumers interact with music, mobile listening barely accounts for 2 minutes – in last place behind radio, computers, TV (including ads) and video games for the average consumer of music. It’s growing but currently holds the title as most over-hyped technology.