Are People Done Buying Albums?

People are not buying albums as much as they used to. Despite the fact that overall music sales increased by 10.5 percent in the United States in 2008, album sales continue to drop at a steady rate, according to the NPD Group.

So far in 2009, 231.1 million albums have been sold. That's down 15 percent from this time last year, Reuters reported.

Why the drop in album sales? Don't people enjoy music anymore? Is the Internet taking over?

The increase in music sales last year was largely due to downloading. People bought more than 1.5 billion songs over the Internet in 2008. Last year, iTunes became the nation's No. 1 music retailer, surpassing Wal-Mart, according to Ars Technica. About 36 million people now buy music online.

Downloading may not be the only reason people aren't buying albums. The use of Pandora, a Web site that customizes a "radio" station around your taste, doubled last year. Listening to music via social networking sites has also become very popular, with almost half of all teens listening to music via social networking sites.

Other ways of obtaining and listening to music may not be the only reasons albums sales are decreasing. This twenty-first century world has many more mediums of entertainment than it did decades ago. For example, in the last two years, the gaming industry had a record billion-dollar growth.

In addition to engaging in other mediums, people have also been cutting back on music purchases because of the recession.

Another argument is that music is no longer as good as it used to be or that people are satisfied with their albums already, not wanting to buy any more music.

Even so, the decrease in album sales may hold somewhat of a bright spot for artists, allowing them to attain records they otherwise may not have. At the end of August, Colbie Caillat landed at the top of the Billboard 200 chart by selling 106,000 copies of her album "Breakthrough." Years ago, that number of copies probably wouldn't have gotten you a No. 1 album.

This year's highest debuting album will most likely be Eminem's "Relapse," which sold 608,000 copies its first week this May. But even that number is lower than other debut sales the rapper has attained. In May 2002, he sold 1.3 million copies of "The Eminem Show" in its first week.

Even though the future of music is unclear, with album sales still as high as they are and an ever changing electronic world, it doesn't look like people will throw out their CD players just yet.