Americans purchased more music than ever before in 2008, but album sales, the most lucrative product for music companies, was down for the fourth straight year in a row. Music purchases topped 1.5 billion, 10.5% higher than in 2007. A purchase, as far as this report is concerned, can be any type of transaction that deals with music, so an album sale is the same as a digital download. Over 70% of the purchases were digital downloads, or 1.07 billion purchases, vs. 844.2 million last year. Album sales were down 14% to 428.4 million, and are down over 45% since the year 2000.

The report, from Nielson Co., shows a strong preference among consumers for individual track downloads, and clearly indicates that the concept of the album is in serious trouble. One indicator promised hope for the record companies: sales of digital albums were up last year, reaching a high of 65 million. Record companies are looking for high profile acts to raise the consumer interest in full-album downloads.

USA Today has additional information about the report and some of the stats from 2008.