10% Growth in Overall Music Sales; Digital Track Sales Exceed 120% Growth

Canadian Artists Nickelback and Bryan Adams Top the Airplay Charts; Nielsen Music 2006 Year End Music Industry Report For Canada

Nielsen SoundScan Canada, the entertainment industry’s data information system that tracks point-of-purchase sales of recorded music product and Nielsen BDS, the music industry’s leading music performance monitoring service, have announced their 2006 Canadian year-end sales and airplay monitoring data, for the 52-week period January 2, 2006 through December 31, 2006.

http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/January2007/17/c6663.html

Some 2006, year-end factiods:

• Overall music purchases were up nearly 10% from 2005
• Nearly 15 million digital tracks were purchased; an increase of 122% over 2005
• The top 200 tracks accounted for nearly 20% of all track purchases; 2.8 million sales, note that this is consistent with 2005
• Johnny Cash was the biggest selling artist with physical album sales surpassing 540,000
• 34% of all albums purchased were at a Mass Merchant outlet compared to 29% in 2005
• Chain music stores accounted for 66% of all album sales, compared to 71% in 2005
• Classical and Country albums were the only two genres that gained in sales over 2005; up 21% and 15% respectively
• Overall Album sales (including Albums and Track Equivalent Album sales) declined 3.2% compared to 2005
• Total album sales declined 4.7% compared to 2005
• The top two selling artists in Canada during the SoundScan era are both native Canadians; Celine Dion (6.2 million albums sold) and Shania Twain (4.2 million albums sold)
• These same two artists have the biggest selling albums for Canada in the SoundScan era; Shania Twain’s “Come On Over” album has sold 1.9 million units and Celine Dion’s “Let’s Talk about Love” album has reached 1.5 million sales
• Consistent with the previous two years, 25% of total album sales occurred during the Holiday Season (last 6 weeks of year).