According to Nielsen’s SoundScan service, weekly album sales have hit a record low mark for the third time in 2010. For the week ending September 12, SoundScan reports that album sales were 4.83 million, drop from the 4.95 million mark hit on August 15, and the 4.98 million mark recorded on May 30. This is the third time in 2010 that weekly album sales have failed to meet the 5-million mark. Hip hop music sales are reportedly off by more than one-fifth. The only music genres seeing lower sales are Latin music, country and classical.

What Does This Mean For Hip Hop Music?

Some analysts attribute the decline in sales to the recession and music piracy. Digital distribution is also cutting into album sales, but digital music sales are also reported to be down. The album format isn’t as popular as it may have been at one time in part because digital distribution enables people to buy the songs they want without having to buy an entire album.

The popularity of music services like iTunes should convince at least some people that consumers are willing to buy music. The advantage that iTunes offers is that it enables people to buy music economically and choose only the songs they want to hear, without having to pay for songs they don’t. It’s popular because it delivers exactly what the consumer wants.

Still, industry analysts are left with the nagging impression that music sales should be higher. They base this conclusion on the fact that there are a lot of MP3 players, and sales of MP3 devices are relatively healthy. They reason that if people are buying the players, they should also be buying the music to go along with them, right?

MP3 players are for more than just digital music though. A lot of people have converted their existing music libraries to digital format. This provides the listener with what they want at no cost since they’ve already purchased the media. People choose to listen to other audio products like podcasts.

People also choose to produce their own music. Self-produced music is growing in popularity and people now have the tools they need to make the sounds they’re interested in hearing. Sonic Producer is a great example of a complete music production software suite. With Sonic Producer, even a novice music producer can create the sounds s/he wants to hear and export professional-sounding results to MP3. Don’t believe me? Download your copy of Sonic Producer today and find out just how easy it can be to self-produce your own music.

Photo Credit: katutaide, via Flickr