Hit digital albums have lost market share to far less popular titles. But hit digital tracks have gained market share over the years.

In August, women made up 56.1 percent of the Web traffic to music sites. Overall, music sites pulled in 42.5 million unique female visitors in August.

A sold out show or an album going gold, platinum or diamond is music to the ears of emerging artists and veteran musicians alike. But achieving that goal typically takes more than just great songs—exposure is a key contributor.

As Myspace.com continues its strategic move toward becoming an “entertainment portal,” the growth to Myspace Music should help cement their presence in this space. Since the site’s launch in September 2008, unique visitors to the music.myspace.com subdomain have increased 190 percent — growing from 4.2 million unique visitors to 12.1 million in June 2009. Year-over-year traffic to the URL has increased 1,017 percent.
When comparing unique visitors of the music.myspace.com subdomain to other sites within the music category in June, it ranked third behind AOL Music and Yahoo! Music and …

The breaking news of Michael Jackson’s sudden death dominated the web yesterday (and today), causing spikes in traffic and overwhelming social networks such as Twitter and Facebook with bursts of information and updates from millions of users. In comparison, discussions of Jackson far exceeded those of the swine flu scare as well as the inauguration of President Obama.

Nielsen Buzzmetrics analysis shows that more than 16% of tweets over the past 24 hours reference Michael Jackson, and less than 2 percent of Tweets mention Farrah Fawcett and Iran.

A Topper of Charts …

Nielsen has issued a year-end look at the most popular trends among Americans during 2008, covering everything from the top TV programs to the most popular consumer packaged goods.
William P. Young’s ”The Shack” was the top-selling fiction book through November 30.
Among non-fiction books, “A New Earth,” by Eckhart Tolle was the top-seller.
The audio version of Tolle’s “A New Earth” was the top-selling audio book of the year.

Nielsen has issued a year-end look at the most popular trends among Americans during 2008, covering everything from the top TV programs to the most popular consumer packaged goods.
It’s official: Americans love their carbs.  The Bread and Baked Goods category ranked number one for 2008 — both in terms of consumer purchases and retail sales.  According to Nielsen, 99% of U.S. homes purchased bread/baked goods at least once during the 52 weeks ending June 28, 2008.  The Bread/Baked Goods category raked in $18.3 billion in sales through November 1.  Other …

Nielsen has issued a year-end look at the most popular trends among Americans during 2008, covering everything from the top TV programs to the most popular consumer packaged goods.
Sony’s Playstation 2 was the top game console of 2008, claiming 31.7% of all measured console minutes, according to Nielsen.  The Xbox 360 and Wii ranked second and third, respectively, with 17.2% and 13.4% of all usage minutes between January and October of this year.
Blizzard Entertainment’s “World of Warcraft” was the most popular PC game title of the year, drawing an average of 0.723% of all PC …

Nielsen has issued a year-end look at the most popular trends among Americans during 2008, covering everything from the top TV programs to the most popular consumer packaged goods.
Google was the most popular website with U.S. Internet users, drawing the largest audience (120 million unique visitors per month, on average) through October 2008.
As of 2008, the most prolific content downloaders in the U.S. live in California, according to Scarborough Research, a joint partnership with Nielsen and Arbitron. The San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose market had the highest percentage (32%) of adults who had downloaded …

Nielsen has issued a year-end look at the most popular trends among Americans during 2008, covering everything from the top TV programs to the most popular consumer packaged goods.
Motorola’s RAZR V3 series handset was easily the most popular mobile phone in use in the U.S., as of Q3 2008.
In October, more than 15.2 million American mobile Internet users visited Yahoo! Mail, making it the most popular mobile Web destination that month.  Google Search, which drew more than 10.5 million mobile Internet users in October, ranked second. 
Among master ringtones — 20-30 second excerpts of recorded …