For The First Time In Ages, Music Sales Reports Don't Look Like This

Nielsen and Billboard have just released their 2011 Music Industry Report, and for the first time in eight years the number of total albums sold has gone up. You can check the figures here. And when you do so, you’ll also see that for the first time ever digital sales have beat phsycal music sales.

Still, just because sales are up from 2010 that doesn’t mean the industry’s “saved” or anything like that. It’s the beginning of a recovery process that will take a good couple of years.

And there should be no doubt in anybody’s mind that services like Spotify, Grooveshark and Rdio are to thank for this increase in sales. If anything, these services are responsible for instilling something that was unthinkable just some years ago: the concept of listening to music legally online.

It’s all gone full circle. Digital music hurt the industry at first, but now it’s making people support their favorite artists with their wallets again.

So, contrary to what lots of people predicted, digital music didn’t kill the industry in the end. It did exactly the opposite, giving it a whole new lease of life when least expected. It’ll be really interesting to see what the music report for 2012 looks like.

Provided the world hasn’t ended by then, that’s it.

My, the state these Mayans have left us all in…