Music sales have topped 1.5 billion units for the first time ever in the USA.
Despite the perceived drop in the music biz, digital sales have fuelled the most successful year ever for total sales in the US music industry.1,513 million sales were tallied during 2008 according to Nielsen SoundScan. That was up from 1,369 million last year or a 10.5% increase.
While overall album sales were down 8.5%%, digital album sales were up 32%. More people bought albums digitally than ever before last year. Digital albums accounted for 65.8 million sales.
The real surprise was the increase in vinyl sales. They were up 89% this year, albeit on a small total figure of 1.88 million.
More than 1 billion tracks were sold digitally in 2008. Digital track sales sold 1,070 million last year.
The top selling digital artist was Rihanna. The top selling digital song was ‘Bleeding Love’ by Leona Lewis and the top selling digital album was ‘Viva La Vida’ by Coldplay.
