The Music Hasn’t Died: Sales Up for First Time Since 2004

The world may end this year, but at least the music will go on. Nielsen and Billboard released their 2011 Music Industry Report and the news is finally good: Total album sales increased for the first time since 2004 and digital sales finally beat out physical music sales for the first time, in units at least.

The information for the report was gathered from Nielsen SoundScan, a data information system that tracks music sales, streams, downloads and other types of acquisition. The information includes hard copy sales and sales data from major retailers such as Amazon.com as well as Nielsen BDS, a music performance monitoring service.

The music industry is far from saved. Album sales may be up from 2010 but they've yet to fully recover. This is partially due to the Internet and online music culture which has drastically shifted how music is found, distributed and enjoyed. Piracy is a constant but music streaming services such as Spotify, Rdio and Grooveshark are offering legal ways to get music online.

While most people were waiting for the industry to die a slow, complicated death, music is still alive and kicking. People are always willing to support musicians and artists, it's nice that the stats, collected below, show they're also voting with their wallets. Take a gander at some of the report's key findings or check out the full, detailed report for way more nitty-gritty.

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Highlights from the 2011 Music Industry Report

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• Total album sales hit 330.6 million units, compared to 326.2 million in 2010. That's an increase of 1.3%. That may seem small but considering sales have been on a slide since 2004, any improvement is a big deal.
• Digital music sales beat out physical music sales (CDs, vinyl, etc.), accounting for 50.3% of all music purchases, in units, in 2011.
• Digital sales hit 1.27 billion units. This is a new record for digital sales and an increase of 8.4% from 2010.
• Physical album sales (228 million) declined 5% since 2010. This is actually an improvement over last year when physical sales decreased 19.5% from 2010 to 2009.
• Vinyl hit a new record with 3.9 million sales in 2011. That's 1.1 million more sales than the previous record, set in 2010.
• Music streaming — collected via Nielsen BDS — wasn't nearly as high as digital or physical sales, but ranked high in the report. Lady Gaga was the most streamed artist with more than 135 million streams while "Super Bass" by Nicki Minaj was the most streamed songs with nearly 85 million streams.
• It was a good 2011 for jazz, New Age and electronic music which grew (in terms of sales and play) by double digits. Jazz grew by 26%, New Age was up 16% and electronic music rose 15%.
• Digital album growth also favored the underdog. Rap and Electronic digital album sales both increased by 42%. This is especially impressive given the large online and bootleg culture in both genres.
• Big Winners in 2011: Lady Gaga may have the most streams but Adele ruled the year: Adele had the best selling album, 21, with 4 million physical sales and 1.8 million digital sales. She had the best selling Internet album (321,000), the best selling digital song, "Rolling in the Deep" (5.8 million) and the most-played song on the radio, also "Rolling in the Deep" with 658,000 detections.

To recap: Adele rocked, album sales finally improved, digital sales are here to stay and people are finally buying music again. Is 2011 just a blip in the industry's steady decline or do these stats show promise for the future? Sound off in the comments below.

Image courtesy of Flickr, all that improbable blue