Album sales: down 15% to 430 million units
CD sales: down 20% to 362 units
Digital album sales: up 32% to 62.8 units
Track sales: up 27% to 1.07 billion units
LP sales: up 92% to 1.9 million units

The track equivalent album is a common measure that converts individual track sales into albums and adds the result to proper album sales. Typically, ten tracks equals one album (because they have the same wholesale value). This is a good way to gauge the impact of consumers' movement to single tracks and away from albums. Even though digital album and track sales were up in 2008, track equivalent albums dropped 8.6%.

Looking for a bright side somewhere? Here's one: track equivalent albums dropped 9.6% in 2007.

On the other side, consider the impact of digital track sales. If you convert all 1.07 billion track sales in 2008, you get 107 million digital albums. That's considerably more than the number of digital albums that actually sold in 2008, but it's far short of the 362 million CDs that consumers purchased in 2008. In terms of revenue, minutes of music purchased, and total tracks, the CD is still and by far the dominant format.

In 2008, growth rates for both tracks and digital albums nearly converged around 30%. The bad news is the days of explosive growth rates are gone. The good news is unit increases get bigger while the growth rates drop. With no new retailer or business model on the horizon, and with iPhone applications better at free music services than enticing purchases, expect digital growth rates to continue their downward trajectory.