The End is Here

When was the last time you went to a store to pick up an album? Are you the type to download collections on iTunes, or have you given up on the format entirely? If you’re one of the millions of Americans who did purchase an album in 2014, you may want to know the shopping habits of your fellow countrymen, and of how you fit in with them.

There are still plenty of people buying albums, and those who do have changed the way they do so—or, more specifically, they’ve changed where they do so.

Record stores have been closing in droves for over a decade now, and it’s still not looking great for some. While the world watched large retailers like Best Buy, Walmart, Barnes & Noble and Target take over huge chunks of market share, those names are no longer the leaders they once were. In fact, of all the places where consumers shop for physical CDs, that group suffered the worst loss last year.

Sales at chains like Barnes & Noble and Trans World Entertainment (which operates the still-standing f.y.e. stores, and which used to own brands like Sam Goody and Strawberries), declined 20.6% year over year. The mass merchants (Target, Walmart, etc.) only fared slightly better, losing just over 19% in sales.

The number of albums sold in both of these store categories may be shrinking, though that’s not to say that they are  insignificant. Chains (Best Buy, Barnes & Noble, etc.) moved 31 million albums in 2014, down from 39 million the previous year. The bigger merchants (Walmart, Target) sold just over double that—63 million records—a loss of 15 million from 2013.