Josh Tanz
The music industry has seen vast changes since 2000. Album sales have dropped precipitously year over year while both legal and illegal online music downloads have skyrocketed. Apple’s iTunes store has sold over 6 billion songs while the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has sued over 35,000 illegal music content distributors.

In the last month, though, the music industry has entered a new era. Beginning December 19th the RIAA stopped issuing new lawsuits. On January 6th, Apple announced it will allow unlimited copying of their files. Essentially, …

Artists such as Lil Wayne, Taylor Swift, Rihanna, Coldplay and Flo Rida helped consumers make more decisions to buy music than ever for the fourth year in a row according to Nielsen SoundScan. While total album sales slipped 14% from 500.5 to 428.4M in 2008, sales of digital albums were up 32% from 50M to 65.8M in 2008. Sales of individual digital tracks also grew, soaring 27% over the previous year’s sales. Ironically, in the new digital age, sales of vinyl LPs were at an all-time high (1.88M).
More SoundScan data …