In its opening week, “I Dreamed a Dream,” the debut album from singing phenom Susan Boyle, topped the Billboard 200 album chart with sales of 701,000 copies according to Nielsen SoundScan, overtaking Eminem’s “Relapse” as the year’s best sales week for an album in the U.S.

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 …