Posted 01/05/09 at 02:31:09 PM by Andy Salisbury

As digital music stores become more common and convenient, the age of the compact disc as the preferred medium is coming to a close. In fact, according to year-end sales figures released by The Nielsen Co., sales of CDs are down a whopping 20 percent.
The sales of physical discs have dropped from 450.5 million in 2007 to only 362.6 million in 2008. And during this time, digital album sales made a gigantic jump of 32 percent over their previous year’s sales.
Apple’s iTunes music store has been particularly successful, having broken the 1 billion song mark with 1.07 billion sold. Along with this, their sales went up 27 percent over the previous year.
Image Credit: Apple, Inc.
Links:
[1] http://www.maximumpc.com/user/andysalisbury
[2] http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/entertainment&id=6582493
[3] http://www.maximumpc.com/article/daily_news_brief_apple_considerin_unlimited_itunes
[4] http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/over_5_billion_songs_sold_itunes
[5] http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/rumor_itunes_drop_drm_starting_tomorrow