Argentina CD Sales

In an effort to follow unique sales trends in different countries, I have come across an interesting story coming out of Argentina. The rest of the world seems to be moving away from physical cd sales and moving towards digital music consumption. Not so in Argentina.

Sales of cds were up to 3.89 million units for 1Q 2008. This is compared to 3.77 million units sold in 1Q 2007. The interesting thing is that digital sales are also increasing, and by an even higher rate of 44% from 1Q last year. Another interesting fact in all of this is that an astonishing 42.5% of all sales were of local Argentinian acts.

The rise in cd sales has a lot to do with the upswing in the Argentinian economy. I would guess that cd sales are also a more legitimate type of purchase. Perhaps digital music consumers have been burned by bad quality downloads or even viruses as a result of downloads. Apparently there is also a strong push by the government with education about piracy. It’s also possible that more of the population has cd and dvd players instead of computer or mobile devices for which to download music.

It will be interesting to keep an eye on this phenomenon.

Stay tuned,
Erik
erikrostad.com