Hip-hop album sales way down in 2014

As the entertainment and music industries start to take stock of how things went in 2014, hip-hop album sales were down significantly for the year.

Here’s the interesting thing: at this point, many people might not even know what all is measured to figure out the numbers for album sales. Ask around, and many would react by saying: “Wait, you mean people still buy CDs and stuff?”

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One might assume that the music industry is thriving because of the sales of streaming music, but not everything is pointing up. There is some give and take, whether it is from one medium to the other or from one genre to the other. It is with that in mind that we see an interesting tidbit about album sales in 2014.

As passed along by Complex, hip-hop album sales were down by a significant margin last year.

"Hip-hop and R&B, in particular, suffered heavy hits. No hip-hop albums ranked in the top 10 of album sales in 2014, and total hip-hop sales fell 25.1 percent—about double the declines for overall sales. Total R&B sales dropped at a similar clip, coming down by 24.1 percent."

What is perhaps even more interesting about this situation is the fact that hip-hop and R&B artists and story lines tended to dominate in 2014. When you consider viral content, so much of it came from either hip-hop videos or the actions of hip-hip artists.

There was plenty of conversation this year about hip-hop and the evolving faces of the industry. There were prominent female rappers such as Nicki Minaj and Iggy Azalea, and there was certainly lots of talk about their roles in the industry.

Even if album sales are down, the interest in the genre was still represented in streaming music sales. From Complex:

"It is important to note, however, that both hip-hop and R&B are popular streaming genres. Streamed tracks increased 54 percent last year to 164 billion songs. According to Billboard, that 57.5 billion track difference is equivalent to an increase in album sales of 56.1 million units."

So that’s the rub. People are still purchasing hip-hop music and listening to it. It’s not that fans have lost interest in that or any other genre. It just might be that it’s time for the industry to change the way that data is analyzed to understand how consumers are accessing music.

It will be interesting to see where these numbers stand one year from now, whether there will be some regression or if the gap will continue to grow between album sales and streaming music purchases.

As the entertainment and music industries start to take stock of how things went in 2014, hip-hop album sales were down significantly for the year.

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