Adele loses out to the oldies.

Albums from Pink Floyd, The Beatles, and Miles Davis helped lead a charge of catalogue sales in 2015 that overtook current releases for the first time in history.

According to a report by Nielsen data, catalogue sales (defined as over 18 months old) totaled 122.8m copies in the US against 118.5m for current releases (down 9.2% from the previous year). Just ten years ago, current releases outsold catalogue by 150m units, marking the change in consumption that the industry has undergone.

Music Business Worldwide has a breakdown of the report’s key points, which notes that LP sales (in CD, vinyl, and digital formats) helped catalogue releases take the lead. So much for the death of the album then.

The report doesn’t yet include details of catalogue vs current releases on streaming platforms.

Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon was the highest selling catalogue album with 50,000 sales, then came The Beatles’ Abbey Road with 49,800, and Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue with 49,000.

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