Despite much doomsaying by analysts and trade groups, music sales are actually up by 10% as of the end of 2008. According to a report from Nielsen SoundScan, sales are up, but much of this growth can be attributed to vinyl and digital sales. The report notes that more than 1.5 billion songs were sold digitally in 2008, a 10% bump over 2007. However, vinyl sales were up by 89% over the previous year. That is a relatively small number (1.88 million) but not all retailers participate in SoundScan.

While it's impossible to say, many of the smaller or independent retailers will not be reporting to SoundScan. Those retailers are often more likely to specialize in vinyl so it is difficult to be sure how much of those sales come from vinyl. The only bad news came for physical CDs which were down 14% from 2007.