Discogs Mid-Year Survey Shows Surprising Surge In CD Sales
Music marketplace Discogs has released its Marketplace Analysis & Database report for the first half of 2019 and it revealed some surprising data about online music retail.
The report showed the continued popularity of the vinyl format with consumers, with sales rising 3.03% year-over-year with over 4.3 million records purchased. More surprisingly, the data compiled in the report suggests that the demise of the compact disc has perhaps been exaggerated with the format seeing growth of 23.6% for the first half of the year.
Discog’s top catalog sales included Talk Talk’s Spirit of Eden, which took the #1 spot, followed by Tracy Chapman’s eponymous debut album, which came in at number 2. 
The Top New Album Sales saw the replica test pressing of Bob Dylan’s Record Store Day release of Blood on the Tracks take the top spot, followed by the Record Store Day re-release of the original motion picture soundtrack of The Crow at #1.
Pink Floyd’s iconic albums The Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here were the top two most popular Master Releases for the first half of 2019, while also stealing the number one spot for Most Wanted and Most Collected album.
The report compared data from the Nielsen mid-year report and often ran at odds with findings from that analysis. Nielsen reports a drop in the growth of physical sales of -15.10%, while Discogs shows an overall increase of 9.14% and the two data collectors delivered widely divergent top-ten albums list.
According to Nielsen, the top three vinyl albums for the first half of 2019 included the original motion picture soundtrack for “Bohemian Rhapsody,” Queen’s “Greatest Hits vol. 1,” and Billie Eilish’s “When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?” Discogs reported the aforementioned “Blood On The Tracks” at number one, followed by U2’s “Europa” EP and the OST for “Lost in Translation.”
Other oddities from Discog’s top ten include industrial rock icons Killing Joke’s eponymously named 1980 debut album at number 9, and “Metaphorical Music” the 2003 debut album from the late Japanese hip-hop icon Nujabes.
