While overall music sales are up 19 percent compared to last year at this time, translating into 46 million additional music purchases, sales of physical CDs have dropped 20 percent compared to 2006.

So far this year, consumers have purchased 89 million physical CDs. That’s 23 million fewer than the 112 million music fans bought last year.

And while digital album sales increased 100 percent over last year, overall album purchases, including “track equivalent albums,” where 10 digital track purchases count as one album sale, dropped 10 percent to 118 million from last year’s 131 million benchmark.

Of course, piracy is still a factor in declining music sales. Despite the recording industry’s efforts, peer-to-peer song sharing refuses to go away. Chances are you can find anything you want if you look hard enough. And, in most cases, you don’t have to look very hard.

But aside from piracy, industry watchers say the latest Nielsen SoundScan figures indicate consumers are choosing to buy individual tracks instead of complete albums.

“It comes back to consumers being in complete control of their media experience,” Gartner Research music analyst Michael McGuire told news outfit AFP. “This is a tough business being a record label because they have to find new sources of revenue.”