Christian/Gospel Music Album Sales Rise In 2006

Country was not the only story in 2006, Styll added, noting that the breakout success of artists like Flyleaf, Underoath, Juanita Bynum, Kutless and Mat Kearney and the continued popularity of Kirk Franklin, Chris Tomlin, Casting Crowns and others contribute to a positive outlook for the long-term health of Christian/Gospel music.

Additional Year-End Notes and Facts:

• According to Nielsen SoundScan’s 2006 Year-end report the Christian/Gospel category of overall album sales joined classical, soundtracks and Latin as the only genres that grew in sales in 2006. Christian/Gospel music sales are the largest of those four genres and represents 6.75 percent of all album sales.

• Overall Christian/Gospel album sales were up 1.5 percent for the year when factoring in digital track equivalency compared to the overall music industry’s overall music sales downturn of 1.2 percent. (Nielsen SoundScan calculates digital track equivalency by converting every 10 individual tracks to one album unit). Excluding digital track equivalents, Christian/Gospel album sales are still up, 1.3 percent.

• Legal digital music sales continue on an impressive growth trajectory, with a total of 5.2 million tracks sold a 22.9 increase over 2005. Digital albums sales nearly doubled from 597,000 in 2005 to 1.1 million in 2006, a 91 percent increase. The top-selling digital album was Mat Kearney’s Nothing Left to Lose which had 28,456 in digital sales, and the top-selling digital track was “Beautiful Love” from The Afters, the 2006 recipient of the Dove Award for New Artist of the Year, with 189,461 units downloaded.

• Mainstream retail outlets sold 64 percent of all Christian/Gospel music sales while Christian retail accounted for 36 percent of gospel music sales.

• The top 10 markets in 2006 were Los Angeles, Atlanta, New York, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Chicago, Washington D.C., Houston, Philadelphia, Seattle-Tacoma and Tampa/St. Petersburg.

• The most popular styles of Christian/Gospel music were AC/pop (23%), black gospel (20%) and rock (16%). Praise & worship followed with approximately 10 percent of sales.
  
  
  

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