| Music
According to the BBC in January 2012, US music sales increased in 2011 for the first time since 2004, figures from Nielsen Soundscan have revealed.
Album sales rose by 1.3% in 2011. In total, 4.4m more albums were bought in 2011 than in 2010, with CD remaining the most popular format.
Only one in three albums were purchased digitally, figures show.
Figures
show that there were 13 albums last year that sold more than a million
copies, equalling the 2010 total.
For the last few years, the top-selling records in the US
have sold about 3.5m copies. You have to go back to 2004, when Usher
sold 8m copies of his Confessions album, to find an artist who has
beaten Adele's tally.
However, in the 1990s, the most popular albums rarely dropped
below her 5.8m total. In 1999 and 2000, the Backstreet Boys and 'NSync
managed to sell in excess of 9m copies of their albums.
The last British act to top the US end-of-year sales chart was the Spice Girls, whose debut album achieved the feat in 1997.
Rock group Radiohead topped the chart for vinyl sales, selling 64,000 copies of their latest album King Of Limbs.
In the UK, album sales fell by 6% in 2011, despite a 24% increase in digital album downloads.
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