Billboard reports that music sales, especially CD sales, were down a lot in 2007, but digital sales are helping:

But album sales, including digital albums, finished at 500 million units — a 14.9% decline from the 542.4 million copies scanned in 2006. That breaks out to an 18.8% decline for CDs, which scanned 449.2 million versus the 553.4 million units the album format generated in 2006. Digital album scans totaled 50 million, or 10% of all album scans. […]

When albums, including track equivalent albums — using an equation of 10 track downloads per one album unit — are considered, overall album sales declined 9.5% to 585 million units from 646.3 million units in 2006.

I wonder if we’ll miss the compact disc… I wish there was a better way of including liner notes with digital downloads. I like to know who played what on the albums I listen to, where it was recorded, who wrote the songs, etc. Are we a dying breed?

Previously: 2006 SoundScan Data.