The Sound of Music
01/13/2012 | | 2011 music sales, Albums, digital music, Elliot's Brief Blog, Music, Music Albums, US music, US music sales
The Friday File: US album sales rose 3% in ’11, to 458 million; the first rise since ’04. Digital sales are why. They rose 20% (or by 20 million) to 103 million albums while CD sales fell 6% (14 million) to 225 million. The remaining 130 million albums consists of 1.3 billion single-track downloads, which grew by 9% (127 million): every 10 singles are counted as an “album.” British singer Adele topped the charts selling 6.7 million albums, 1.5% of all music!