New Music Industry Poll: With industry figures showing music downloads rapidly declining in popularity, do you still pay to own songs?

New figures from research firm Nielsen have have revealed that, in the US at least, the popularity of music downloads has declined greatly over the past few months.

Q1 sales of digital tracks were down 12.5%, to 312 million units, while digital album sales dropped 14.2% to 27.8m. Billboard.com notes that the decline is comparable to the huge collapse in CD sales seen in the years 2007-2010.


CD sales dropped to 31.9m by the end to the quarter, from 40.1m a year earlier.

Digital streams, meanwhile, have seen a marked rise. Interactive music and video streams hit 34.28bn in Q1, up from 25.44bn in the same period a year earlier.

Do these figures ring a bell with you? Have you stopped downloading music in favour of a streaming service like Spotify or Deezer? Or are you one of the people who still buys CDs? Check out the poll results below.



How are you most likely to spend money on songs and albums?