The line graph illustrates the proportion of total music sales by three different means, including streams, downloads and CDs purchased over a seven-year period, commencing in 2011.
Overall, it is evident that all categories, with the exception of streams, experienced a substantial decline. In addition, the percentage of music sales through streams emerged as the highest by the end of the period.
In 2011, CDs purchased had the highest percentage among the three methods, at about 55%, in comparison with 35% of downloads and 5% of streams. The next two years witnessed a downward trend in the proportion of CDs at 40% while the figure for streams underwent a sharp growth at approximately 10%. In the meantime, downloads increased steadily at 41%, overtaking CDs in 2013.
In the year of 2014, downloads reached the highest peak of over two-fifths, followed by a gradual decline to a third in 2018. During the same period, the figure for streams continued its upward trend to surpass 40% in 2018, after exceeding CDs and downloads in 2016 and 2017 respectively. Nevertheless, the percentage of CDs experienced a steady fall to around a quarter of the total music sales at the end of the period.