April 01, 2009

By By Ed Christman

While Universal Music Group (UMG) remains the top U.S. distributor of albums - including track equivalent albums (TEA) whereby 10 track downloads equal one album - the company's sales slipped slightly in the first quarter, allowing Sony Music Entertainment and the Warner Music Group (WMG) to edge up in market share gains.

UMG finished the first quarter ended March 29 with a 31.1% share, down slightly from the 31.6% it had in the first quarter last year, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Sony grew to 25.9% in the current period from 25.4% in the first quarter of 2008, while WMG grew slightly to 20.7% from 20.4% in the prior period.

The independent sector collectively dropped to 13.7% of U.S. albums and TEA from the 14.1% it had in the first quarter of 2008, while EMI grew a tick to 8.6%.

Overall, the U.S. industry finished with albums, including TEA, down 7% to 123.4 million from the 132.7 million generated in the first quarter of 2008.

Meanwhile, album sales, excluding TEA, were down 13.5% to 90.4 million from the 104.5 million the U.S. industry scanned in the 2008 first quarter.

Within that, CD album sales were down 20.3%, to 70.5 million from 88.4 million in the corresponding earlier period, while digital album sales increased 23% to 19.3 million from the 15.7 million customers downloaded in the first quarter of 2008.

Digital track sales stood at 329.5 million at the end of the quarter, up 17% from the 281.4 million that were scanned in the first quarter last year. So far this year, Taylor Swift's "Fearless" is the best selling album with 824,000 units, while the album version of ?Right Round? by Flo Rida is the down track download with 2.4 million units.

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