No Naxos release topped 5,000 sales last year

The latest stats from Klaus Heymann, founder of the budget classical label:

‘CD sales are not holding,’ Heymann said. ‘In 2015, we had seven new releases that sold more than 10,000. In 2016, not a single release sold more than 5000. There’s still a stable market that buys 2000–4000 of everything. I am confident there will be CDs for another 5 or maybe 10 years. But the times of substantial sales are gone.

‘I also think that downloading will shrink or shrivel. Our iTunes figures went down 30% from the year before. Streaming is making good money for people with vast catalogs who can build playlists, but it’s not doing anything for album sales. People aren’t listening to albums as much as single tracks.’

Read the full stereophile.com interview here.

See also: Naxos stops streaming.