Note to remember
It looks like
online music, which the industry has fought to the last bullet, might have
saved record label's bacon this year.
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 beancounters at Nielsen. However these figures include
physical albums, digital albums and tracks, and music videos. On their own
digital music was the biggest growth industry. 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.
Nielsen said that the number
of albums sold fell 14 percent to 428 million in the year just ended. CDs
sold through e-commerce sites fell 8.6 percent to 27.5 million units
from 2007 to 2008. In other words people are downloading their music
and they are only interested in singles.
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.