Music To My Ears

Ever since the invention of mp3 file sharing with Napster, and Apple's game changing iPod, the traditional model of the music industry has crumbled into pathetic shambles and has struggled ever since, in terms of influence, market presence, and profit.

As with so many other things today, music went digital and it's long been clear that this was the next, future format. The way of purchasing entire, physical albums in stores would become a thing of the past. Now, it would be convenient, individual digital files, that may or may not be obtained "legally" over the Internet, loaded onto portable audio devices that can store an almost endless supply of music.

But despite the ever-growing concept of purchasing music digitally online, initially begun by Apple's iTunes store almost 9 years ago, physical sales of music still somehow outnumbered digital sales...until now.

For the first time ever, in 2011, digital music sales topped the physical side, by accounting for 50.3% of all music sales for the entire year. Digital sales managed to increase another 8.4% in 2011, while physical music sales dropped another 5%.

The desperate attention whore known as Lady Gaga took the top spot as they year's most online streamed artist, while the title of most streamed song of 2011 went to Nicki Minaj's piece of trash called "Super Bass". The only bright spot of 2011 was the enormously talented Adele, whose album "21" was the top selling album in both physical and digital forms and whose song, "Rolling In The Deep" was the top selling digital song with 5.8 million downloads. Which means that Adele single-handedly saved what's left of the music industry last year.

Now that the scale has finally tipped and digital sales have become the majority, it will only increase exponentially from this point on, especially so with the growing trend of storing one's collection in "the cloud". In time, physical albums will no longer be manufactured and sold, at least not to the mainstream extent they still are now. CDs will be regulated to becoming nothing more than an item of nostalgia and offered in small, limited quantities like vinyl pressings.

Source: CNN Money