Digital distribution of music helped the industry grow by 10 percent last year despite falling sales of complete albums. It seems that the sky is not falling for the music business despite the moaning of industry execs about the online era.

Overall music sales in the US grew by 10.5 percent or $1.5 billion in 2008. That number combines all media from vinyl to CD or digital download.

Digital music sales now accounts for 70 percent of all music solid in the US. These downloads grew by a whopping 27 percent last year. Total album sales fell to 428 million in 2008, down 14 percent from the prior year.

Seventy-one songs reached over a million downloads in 2008 as opposed to only 41 in 2007. Purchases of individual songs now outnumber album sales by 2.5 to 1.

The top-selling digital song was Leona Lewis’ Bleeding Love with 3.42 million downloads. Lil Wayne’s Lollipop also topped 3.16 million downloads.  Flo Rida’s Low, Katy Perry’s I Kissed a Girl and Coldplay’s Viva la Vida round out the top five downloaded songs of 2008.

Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter III was the best selling album at 2.87 million copies. Coldplay’s Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends, Taylor Swift’s Fearless and Kid Rock’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Jesus were the top four with over 2 million sales each.

This means that fewer songs are creating the bulk of the revenue growth in the industry. These factors create heightened pressure on artists and the industry to create hit songs.

This is a surprising result for anyone who thought that the Internet would democratize music distribution. It shows that independent artists are still struggling to be found amongst all the noise. However, all ships rise in a storm, so Independent artists could also be getting a boost from booming music downloads as well.

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Entry was posted on Monday, January 5th, 2009 at 10:48 am under Ecommerce, Music.

Read more entries by Dave Jeyes.
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