On January 10th I did a post about US vinyl album sales in 2009 and how the 2.5 million vinyl LPs sold in 2009 was a new peak since Soundscan started keeping track in 1991. This climb in vinyl sales has been a sharp climb from just under one million in 2007 to 1.8 million in 2008 to 2.5 million in 2009.

Vinyl sales weren’t the only music sales climbing in 2009 because US music download sales hit an all time high. A new record was set for digital album sales (76.4 million, a climb of 16% from 2008) and for digital track sales (1.159 billion, a climb of 8%.) Yes, you read that correctly – there were over a billion digital downloads sold last year.

Meanwhile, US CD sales continued to drop (there were 12% less CDs sold in 2009 than there were in 2008.) Yes, there were still far more CD sales than digital album sales (almost 300 million vs 76 million) but when you consider the billion+ single track downloads (which you could think of as about the equivalent of 100 million more digital album sales) than the lead CDs have over digital downloads isn’t as big as it appears to be (and it’s shrinking rather quickly.)

I think within a few years there will be more digital download sales (when approximating every 10 single track downloads as one full album download) than CD sales. Using this approximation for 2009 it was about 300 million for CDs vs. about 192 million for digital downloads.

These billion+ track downloads leads me to wonder which tracks are being downloaded most often? If you’re wondering the same thing then below you’ll find the (somewhat disturbing) answer.

Top Ten USA Track Downloads In 2009

1. Black Eyed Peas – “Boom Boom Pow” – 4.8 million
2. Black Eyed Peas – “I Gotta Feeling” – 4.4 million
3. Lady Gaga – “Poker Face” – 4.4 million
4. Flo Rida feat. Ke$ha – “Right Round” – 4.2 million
5. Lady Gaga feat. Colby O’Donis – “Just Dance” – 3.2 million
6. Miley Cyrus – “Party in the USA” – 3.2 million
7. Jan Sean feat. Lil Wayne – “Down” – 3.1 million
8. All-American Rejects – “Gives You Hell” – 2.9 million
9. Owl City – “Fireflies” – 2.7 million
10. Jason Derulo – “Whatcha Say” – 2.7 million

Overall there were four “artists” (I use this term loosely as is the custom) with more than 10 million digital sales in 2009 (that’s albums and tracks – although mostly tracks.) Lady Gaga lead the way with 15.3 million digital sales, Black Eyed Peas had 13 million, Michael Jackson had 12.4 million, & Taylor Swift had 12.3 million.

How about digital album sales? The numbers here aren’t nearly as impressive as the track numbers which indicates that most of the type of people who pay for music downloads are the type of people who care about songs rather than complete albums (as I’m sure is the case for the majority of fans of the top ten digital track downloads.)

Top Ten USA Digital Album Sales In 2009

1. Lady Gaga – Fame – 461K
2. Kings of Leon – Only By the Night – 428K
3. Twilight Soundtrack – 350K
4. Taylor Swift – Fearless – 343K
5. Black Eyed Peas – E.N.D. (Energy Never Dies) – 309K
6. Jay-Z – Blueprint 3 – 308K
7. Dave Mathews Band – Big Whiskey… – 286K
8. Eminem – Relapse – 277K
9. U2 – No Line on the Horizon – 261K
10. Fray – Fray – 259K

Not surprisingly, the music on the albums list is a bit less disposable than the music included in the top tracks list. By the way, Dave Matthews Band was also on the top ten vinyl sellers list.

Amazon MP3

Since this post is about music downloads it seems like a good opportunity to direct your attention towards the Amazon MP3 store as it’s where I buy my music downloads and I definitely recommend it. Particularly for anyone who doesn’t want to have to be stuck with the iTunes player (which I think is annoying.) Plus Amazon is always running a variety of promotions at this store. You can often get really good deals.

Bandcamp

For indie music you should check to see if the artist has a bandcamp page because if they do, you should really buy the downloads through there instead of through Amazon or the iTunes Store. Why? Because with bandcamp it’s the artist that gets all of the money rather than the store taking a huge portion of the money and leaving just a bit left over for the artist. Wouldn’t you rather give your money to the (possibly starving) artist that made the music instead of helping Steve Jobs get another million dollars?