The bleeding hasn’t stopped for the music industry as album sales plummeted 12.8% and digital track sales flattened to a meager 1% gain for 2010, according to figures issued Wednesday by Nielsen SoundScan.
Album unit sales dropped to 326.2 million, from 373.9 million units in 2009. The 2010 drop nearly matched 2009's decline of 12.7%.
Overall album sales, physical releases and digital "track equivalent albums" -- fell 9.5%, to 443.4 million units from 489.8 million in 2009. This compared to a drop of 8.5% in 2009.
Just four albums sold more than 2 million units last year; the No. 10 bestseller, Ke$ha's "Animal," barely inched past the 1 million mark, with 1.14 million sold.
In terms of 2010 market share, Universal Music Group led the four majors with 31.4% of albums sold. Sony Music Entertainment ranked No. 2 with 27.4%, with Warner Music Group trailing behind with 19.8% and EMI Music a distant fourth with 9.6%. The independent sector outdid EMI with an 11.6% share.
Rapper Eminem claimed the 2010 album sales championship, moving 3.4 million copies of "Recovery." Country acts trailed only slightly among the top sellers: Lady Antebellum's "Need You Now" placed second with 3 million, while Taylor Swift's late-year release "Speak Now" came in a close third with 2.96 million.
Swift was the top-selling album artist of '10, notching total sales of 4.47 million, followed by Eminem (4.32 million), Lady Antebellum (3.85 million), Justin Bieber (3.73 million) and the cast of the Fox series "Glee" (3.6 million). Swift has sold more than 4 million albums per year for the past three years.
Just four albums sold more than 2 million units last year; the No. 10 bestseller, Ke$ha's "Animal," barely inched past the 1 million mark, with 1.14 million sold.
