US Album Sales Rise for First Time Since 2004
Thanks to the likes of Adele's "21" and Michael Buble's "Christmas" US album sales have risen for the first time since 2004.
Digital sales on sites like iTunes have picked up the slack in physical CD sales.
The uptick to 458 million album sales was helped by the hugely popular sophomore album "21" from British singer Adele, which sold 5.8 million, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Huge interest in Adele also led to the sales of 856,000 copies of "19," her debut album from 2008.
Michael Buble's "Christmas," which was released in late October, racked up 2.5 million album sales. Lady Gaga's "Born This Way" sold 2.1 million, boosted by a massive sale at Amazon.com earlier in the year for a heavily discounted 99 cents.
Digital album sales rose nearly 20 percent to 103 million, while CDs fell nearly 6 percent to 225 million.
The rest of the total is made up largely of digital single tracks, where 10 tracks are counted as one album. Digital singles sales rose nearly 9 percent to 1.27 billion.
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