According to Nielsen SoundScan year-end figures, CD sales fell 20 percent for the year 2008, while digital sales grew 27 percent.
Physical CDs still remain the most profitable media for recorded music, and account for 85 percent of overall album sales.
Over 1 billion digital tracks were sold in 2008, while 362.6 million physical CDs were sold for the year.
Even more disheartening for the record industry is the fact that for the period of September 30th-December 31st, CD sales declined the most. That period is usually the most important time of the year for sales, due to the holidays.
Result for: cd sales
According to a new report from Forrester Research, digital music sales currently account for just over 18 percent of the US music market but that figure should grow exponentially to about 41 percent by 2013.
The report, “U.S. Music Forecast, 2008 to 2013″ also expects that 55 percent of US online consumers will pay to download at least one track in 2013.
Forrester did say however that digital music growth will not compensate for the steep decline in CD sales and that the total market will shrink to under $10 billion USD in 5 years. At its peak, in 1999, the market totaled $14 billion.
Perhaps more notably, the report found that digital music consumers are moving as much as 60 percent of their music budgets to digital and away from CDs and other physical media.
