Music sales for 2008 ride digital coattails

Digital music, long the bane of the music industry, may finally be something that record label executives can smile about.

For 2008, total music sales rose 10 percent to 1.51 billion units sold, up from 1.36 billion units the year before, according to industry tracker Nielsen. Units tallied include physical albums, digital albums and tracks, and music videos.

The biggest contributor to the growth was digital music, Nielsen reported. There were 1.07 billion digital tracks sold in 2008, up 27 percent from 2007, and there were 65.8 million digital albums sold, up 32 percent.

Those numbers square with recent reports on music downloads. For the third quarter, for instance, legal music downloads from sites such as iTunes and AmazonMP3 were up 29 percent from the same period a year earlier, according to NPD Group.

And coincidentally or not, the Recording Industry Association of America in December said that it would dramatically curb its practice of suing people that it suspected of illegal sharing of copyrighted music.

All told, according to Nielsen, the number of albums sold--including CDs, LPs, and digital albums--fell 14 percent to 428 million in the year just ended. Physical albums sold through e-commerce sites fell 8.6 percent to 27.5 million units from 2007 to 2008.

Universal Music Group came out on top among record labels for total album sales in 2008 (31.5 percent market share, down ever so slightly from 2007) as well as for digital albums and digital tracks (market shares of 27.8 percent and 31.8 percent, respectively). Sony BMG was second overall, with 25.3 percent of all album sales for the year, Nielsen said.

The top-selling digital song for 2008 was "Bleeding Love" from Leona Lewis, with 3.4 million units sold, while Rihanna was the top-selling digital artist, with 9.9 million units sold.

Radiohead claimed top honors in the vinyl realm, both as an artist and for one of its albums. The rock band sold 61,200 vinyl albums during the year, of which 25,800 were its In Rainbows album. In 2007, In Rainbows was the focal point of an experiment by Radiohead to let people pay whatever they saw fit to download the album.

Nielsen noted that vinyl sales set a record in its SoundScan era, at 1.88 million units sold, beating the previous record of 1.5 million from 2000. (Nielsen SoundScan tracks point-of-purchase sales of recorded music.)

Leona Lewis, Rihanna, and Coldplay were among the top-selling artists in the digital realm for 2008.

(Credit: Nielsen)

[Henry_Gordon_Jago]

So now the important question. Who sold the most cassettes?

[FinderGateway]

I manage a music related site and we saw quite a bit of interest in subscription services this year - eMusic, Rhapsody, Napster, etc.

Its great to see consumers getting more comfortable with the technology.

- FG
http://www.MusicDownloadFinder.com

[jonathan_bennion]

Wonder what is still driving demand for digital albums, in favor of artists who release a new track every few weeks?

Length of track and interactivity could be a blast for the Beyonces, AC/DCs, and Lil Waynes of tomorrow..

[GardenLobster]

I'm glad everyone's coming around on this. You pay for convenience, so if paying for iTunes or AmazonMP3 to organize and manage your collection becomes easier than snagging stuff off Limewire or a torrent, people will buy the songs. I recently got an iPod and have dabbled a bit not only with transferring all my old CD's onto it, but actually buying a few songs. Interesting to have the full song info and the cover art for once. It's much easier to purchase songs individually than have to go back and delete tracks I don't like on an album. Not all songs are good, and not everyone likes them in the same way, so being able to just get what you want off of an album is nice.

The thing driving digital albums is, they are cheaper than physical CD's and often have a "bulk discount" attached to them. You can either purchase the songs at .79-.99 cents each, but it may be more cost effective just to buy the album at $7.99, depending on how many songs you want from it and how many are on there. Yeah you get tracks you didn't really care for, but you get the ones you wanted for less than doing it individually.

Back in the day, when digital music first came out, you could make personal mix CD's with your spankin' new CD burner. Remember? Last night I took each of those mix CD's and made a playlist for my iPod. The digital revolution is so nice and organized. :) Ugh...now tonight I have to clean those stacks of CD's off my desk - put em back in their bulky catalogs and haul them back to a closet somewhere...

[Boyisageek]

Are there room in the industry for online music magazines like TheEargasm.com - http://www.theeargasm.com ?

[xrslrnce]

These are the top selling artists?
Jeeeeez, how pathetic is that!?!
No wonder the industry is in trouble, all the stuff they have pushed to the top is garbage!

[D3vildog699]

Viva la Vida is not garbage...

Neither is Metallica.... or Jason Mraz... all the others, yeah you're right. Trash.

[MSSlayer]

Metallica leads the trash parade.

If you ever wanted to hear poseurs play something slightly resembling metal, Death Magnetic is for you!

Jason Mraz..trash

Viva la vida...trash

coldplay...trash

Everything on those lists, without exception is trash.

What is tragic is that the new CD from The Damned won't get any publicity.