Performers like Bruce Springsteen who performed at last year’s Super Bowl see significant boosts to album, catalog, and digital sales.

2009 music purchases in the U.S. were up 2.1% over 2008 figures, marking the second year in a row that sales exceeded 1.5B units sold according to Nielsen SoundScan.

It wouldn’t be that strange to see Chuck Berry’s “Johnnie B. Goode,” Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin,’” and Michael Jackson’s “Black or White” on someone’s iPod. Each of these tracks was the top downloaded for its respective decade, according to Nielsen SoundScan data tear-to-date ending July 26, 2009.
The top downloaded track of the past year was Flo Rida’s “Right Round.” It has been downloaded 3.69 million times trailed closely by the Black Eyed Peas “Boom Boom Pow” at 3.67 million. Predictably, the tracks recorded in the last decade have been purchased …

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 …