While sales of physical albums continue to plummet, online digital music retailers are gaining momentum.
According to the information provided by the Nielsen SoundScan system, which tracks purchases of audio and video products in the United States and Canada, for the first three quarters of 2006, the number of albums sold offline was 370.5 million, which is 8.3% less than for the same period last year (404.2 million).
Sales of digital albums, on the contrary, increased by 115% and in September amounted to 22.6 million, while the number of tracks downloaded from the Internet increased by 72% and reached 418.6 million, reports Betanews .