...and increase the music quality instead singer quantity...its just dont make sense to purchase an album just to get 1-2 good songs and 16 *****...for country that which dont have itunes etc to purchase digital/single...illegal download become the only solution...dont blame on piratecy, consumer or goverment for this...

They need to sell those albums more cheaper.

The reason for the decline in physical album sales is quite simple.

In this age, people are practically attached to their ipods. It is small, convenient and fun. Of course, that means people want their music on that iPod. They will turn to amazon.com or itunes to download the album onto the ipod. After all, CDs take up a lot of shelf space once they accumulate. And when will that person really take out the CDs and load them up when they can have their collection in an iPod?

But wait! Once the downloader realizes that he/she doesn't have to buy the whole album, they'll jump for joy! After all, the person really only likes one or two songs from the album, so that is all he/she will download.

This means that recording companies need to step up the music quality. In the past, we've been forced to buy albums simply to have one or two radio-friendly songs. Hell, I remember not even having the chance to LISTEN to the CD before purchase. Thus, the customer paid 9.99 or more for the one song they heard on the radio while the rest of the album was crap. Sadly, recording companies could get away with producing ****** fillers because people didn't have much of a choice. But now, if companies want to sell a record, they're going to need to start producing QUALITY fillers.

I'm confused. The difference between last year's and this year's sales are only 700k. If 4.9 million (5 million rounded) is bad, then does that make 5.76 million good?