However, digital song sales rose 5% to a record high of 1.3 billion downloads.
Now there are just as many music CDs sold (618 million) as digital song downloads (614 million).
Recorded-music sales in the U.S. edged up for the first time since 2004, according to Nielsen SoundScan, thanks to lower prices, growing digital song sales and a massive hit from the singer Adele, whose album "21" sold more copies than any title in the last seven years.
While Apple legitimized buying music online by making the process simple for consumers, the music industry has railed against its insistence on sticking to a one-size fits all price of 99 cents per song for digital tracks in its iTunes store.
Like a siren song of the Digital Age, the World Wide Web has lured thousands of companies into spending billions to get a foothold in cyberspace.
In less than a week Lady Gaga has sold 1 million digital copies of her newest song, Born This Way, making it the fastest selling single ever on iTunes.
What's happened since then with the advent of digital downloads, the consumer has the choice to purchase any song from an album.
Preparing a song is complicated, and involves preparing an array of specialized digital sound files, lyrics, transcriptions and even instructions for virtual camera angles, lighting and choreography for the animated characters that perform the music within the game itself.
"You can't stop someone illegally downloading a song no matter how quickly it goes on sale, " he told Digital Spy earlier this year.
Finally, the newest digital radios offer a re-wind facility: if you missed the start of a programme or song, you can catch the beginning.
Any Universal license holder -- a music site that has been given permission to post song samples, for example -- can go to Loudeye and get the music delivered in any digital format, including Windows Media or QuickTime.
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