Music Sales Up

For all the recording industry doom and gloom that gets bandied about, music sales are up 1.6 percent in 2011.

Sales of physical albums saw an 8.3 percent decline in year-over-year sales compared with 2010, according to the Nielsen Company, but digital albums and digital tracks were up 16.8 percent and 9.6 percent, respectively, during the same period.

And everything old is apparently cool again with vinyl album sales increasing 37 percent and sales of catalog albums up 5.4 percent.