US record sales for 2008

These are extracted from the official SoundScan figures reported by Billboard:

Album sales (physical & digital): 428.4 million albums, -14.4% compared to 2007.

Digital album sales: 65.79 million albums, +31.5% compared to 2007. They now account for 15.4% of overall album sales (10% in 2007).

Digital track sales: 1.07 billion, +26.7% compared to 2007. This is the first year to see over 1 billion tracks sold.

Vinyl albums sales: 1.9 million -- more than any other year since SoundScan began tracking data in 1991 (!!!).

Finally, I'm glad to see that two of my favorite bands did well in 2008:

• AC/DC's Wal-Mart exclusive release, "Black Ice" (Columbia): 1.92 million copies. That's album #5 for the year, which is all the more impressive that it was not released to digital retailers!
• Metallica's "Death Magnetic" (Warner Bros.): 1.57 million (album #7)

If you want the complete 2007 & 2008 stats, here they are.