Album Sales in the U.S. Increased in 2011

Although CD sales continued to drop off, digital and vinyl sales helped turn around the music industry last year.

For the first time in seven years, album sales in the U.S. of A. actually increased in 2011, with iTunes and other online music retailers picking up record stores' slack. All told, 330.6 million albums were sold last year, according to Billboard magazine, an increase of 1.4 per cent from 2010. Granted, CDs continued their years-long trend toward irrelevancy, as sales of them dropped six per cent from 2010. On the other hand, vinyl sales exploded between 2010 and 2011, growing from 2.8 million in 2010 to 3.9 million last year, while digital album sales increased by 20 per cent to top out at 103.1 million. The best-selling albums from last year were Adele's 21, which flipped 5.8 million copies, Michael Bublé's Christmas , which moved more than 2.4 million units, and Lady Gaga's Born This Way, which was purchased by more than two million Americans, both online and off. The singles market also continued to burgeon in 2011, growing by 8.5 per cent to 1.27 billion songs sold last year. So just because the CD might be dead (or at least dying a long, protracted death), does not mean the music industry is.