Music sales have stopped ringing in any cash for this year too. Going by the latest Nielsen Soundscan findings, the compact Disc sales in the US dropped by 20 per cent and music sales in general fell by 12.8 percent.
This is the fourth straight year that music sales in the US have shown a downward trend.

Just how bad can it be? Pretty bad . The 326.2 million albums sold in 2010 were the lowest since Nielsen Sounscan began keeping record sales from 1991. Only 13 albums managed the million selling platinum tag-almost half of 2009 which had 22 platinum albums. The number 22 itself is low compared to the megasales days of compact discs in the late 90s and early 20 hundreds when a single album logged up 3 million sales in a week.

N’ Sync debuted with 2.42 million sales in a week in 2000. The Marshal Mather's LP sold 10 million copies in 2000.

Of the 13 platinum albums of 2010, only four sold over 2 million copies. The best-selling title being the 3.4 million units scanned by Eminem's Recovery . Bieber's debut LP, My World 2.0, was the fourth bestselling album, moving more than 2.3 million units.

The top-selling song, Katy Perry's California Gurls, scanned nearly 4.4 million units last year, which in 2009 would have ranked third behind theBlack Eyed Peas' Boom Boom Pow, which tallied 4.8 million tracks, and the group's I Gotta Feeling, which garnered nearly 4.43 million units.
In the digital realm, growth in individual track sales continued to be slow, barely managing to eke out a 1% increase, as sales reached 1.17 billion units, versus 1.16 billion in 2009. Digital album downloads fared better, posting 13% growth to 86.3 million from the 76.4 million scanned during 2009, accounting for nearly 26.5% of all U.S. album sales last year, according to SoundScan.

Even the rereleases of the classic rock bands and albums or catalog album sales , which are a sure fire hit in the market, saw a downdward trend. It went down 15.3 per cent compared to last year. Although skeptics say that last year’s slightly higher sales of golden classics went up because of the death of Michael Jackson.

Who were best selling the top 10 artists

Taylor Swift, the best selling artist of 2010, may not be able to sell magazine coves but she sold 4,470,000 . The others who made the list are the Glee cast, Eminem, Lady gaga, Michael Jackson and The Beatles.

Universal Music once again led all major labels with 30.8 percent market share of the 2010 sales. Sony Music Entertainment got 27.4% of the slice and Warner Music Group got 19.8% . EMI finished fourth with 9.6%, while the indie sector collectively garnered 11.6%.

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