Digitally Downloaded Music Sales Reach Record High In 2007

As physical CD sales continue their free fall, digital downloads again reached record sales figures for the year. U.S. digital download sales reached an all-time high for the fourth year in a row, culminating with the biggest post-holiday sales week. For Christmas week (December 24-30), shoppers downloaded almost 43 million tracks from various digital music services, according to data from Nielsen SoundScan. That's a 42.5 percent jump over the 30.1 million downloaded in the same week the previous year. For the year, 844.1 million tracks were downloaded digitally, a 45 percent rise over the 581.9 million tally for 2006. Digital albums are up 53.5 percent as well, at 50 million sold, compared with 32.5 million in 2006. Fourth-quarter sales also reached all-time highs, with 231.9 million tracks and 14.2 million albums sold digitally during the period, compared with 163.3 million tracks and 9.8 million albums the year before.