A stronger-than-expected Christmas for music downloads as U.S. digital track sales reached an all-time high last week, with 30.1 units sold, Nielsen SoundScan reports. The increased downloading just before New Year’s represents a 51 percent rise from the 19.9 million digital songs sold during the same weekly period in 2005. Nielsen SoundScan also recorded a 108 percent increase in music downloads by comparing last week’s numbers to the previous week, which experienced sales of 14.5 million.
As Billboard points out, the big jump in digital sales counters analysts’ earlier concerns that the download business has been showing signs of flattening in 2006. For the year total digital track sales are up 65 percent over 2005, SoundScan reports.
Shoppers were apparently undetered, as CNN Money and others reported swarms of online consumers armed with new iPods and iTunes gift cards overwhelmed Apple’s iTunes music store over the holiday, prompting error messages and slowdowns of 20 minutes or more for downloads of a single song.