Study: Album sales collapsing in the UK

Digital Music News reports that the best selling album in the UK last week (Rihanna's Talk That Talk) only moved 9,578 units. That's the lowest total since 1994. To put that number into some context, the UK has a population of almost 60 million.

Last year, major UK retailer HMV shut down 40 stores and 20 of its branch, Waterstone. “The retail group's core markets of CDs and books are in steady decline due to the increased digitisation of the product categories,” explained the Telegraph.

With sales slowing down by 12-14% in the UK this year, will a similar collapse happen in the US?

CD sales have already been at a decline, albeit a slower one than shown in the UK. However, in the last week of July 2012, Zac Brown Band's Uncaged reached number one with weak sales of 48,278 units—the second-lowest chart topper since 1991.