Sales of online music have overtaken those of CDs for the first time, according to Nielsen.
The market research company says digital music sales accounted for 50.3% of all music purchases in 2011, while physical album sales dropped 5% when compared to 2010.
At the same time, digital track sales set a new record at 1.27 billion in 2011. Digital sales grew 8.4%, an increase of 100 million sales, when compared to the previous year.
Digital album sales also exceeded 100 million for the first time, increasing nearly 20% to reach 103.1 million sales (up from 86.3 million in 2010). According to Nielsen, digital album sales accounted for nearly one out of every three album purchases (31%) in 2011. This is compared to 26% in 2010, 20% in 2009, 15% in 2008, 10% in 2007, and 5.5% in 2006.
Nielsen also reported that total music purchases reached the 1.6 billion mark for the first time. Furthermore, overall album sales were up 3.2% compared to the previous year's sales.
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