I was going through Alicia Keys’ discography and I noticed the obvious decline in her album sales, but I only thought that the gp gradually lost interest in HER over the years, but then again, I also noticed a huge decline in Britney Spears’ discography, as well as Celine Dion, Christina Aguilera, Madonna and several other artists who started their music careers 10-12+ years ago and are still releasing new records.
Let’s be honest, only Adele, Taylor Swift & Lady Gaga can still get solid album sales, people are clearly aren’t as hardcore buyers as they used to be 10-20 years ago, is the busy life keeping people away from having time to listen to music other than turning on the radio on their way to work/school, etc… and is the music bit by bit fading away and will eventually vanish?

It's not the interest in music.... it's that there are ways to listen to it without buying it.

How do you explain Adele and Taylor then

I think a lot of it has to do with illegal downloading.

No it's not this. They are just not buying it, they download it for free now.

+ Gaga.

Anyways, it's due to the rise of digital piracy and digital music in general. Most people won't drop $12 on an album when they only truly love 3 or 4 tracks. Many times they'll just opt to drop the $1.29 on the tracks they like and pay the rest dust.

Adele is the exception, not the rule. Taylor does good sales in the US but when you look WW they aren't super amazing.

BTW:
US: 2,200,000
CAN: 100,000+
FRA: 200,000+
UK: 1,000,000+
I don't think it's as impressive as Adele or Taylor tbh

There are people who just don't want to buy music since there are ways acquiring it for free.

You know, I was actually thinking about what this digital age has done to us musically. I remember being a kid and putting on a Britney Spears or Destiny's Child CD and literally bopping for hours to the same album. Back then, I had ~500 songs AT BEST to choose from when it came to my CD selection and changing CDs was so cumbersome that I generally found myself listening to most CDs the whole way through when I put them in.

I can't tell you the last time I did that. Now I constantly shuffle around my iTunes until it hits something I feel like listening to and even then I might just get bored and skip after the first chorus. I wonder if the digital age has spoiled us and made us appreciate music less.

Charts need to include illegal and pirate downloads in their ratios.

Born This Way is at between 6M and 7M WW and that's being fairly conservative. Remember her big numbers in places like Japan too (where BTW hit 2x Platinum and was the best selling international album of 2011 there). Also your Canada numbers are off because Born This Way recently went 4x Platinum there which puts it well over 300,000.

Not as impressive as Adele certainly, but Red has yet to match BTW's WW sales, much less The Fame.

I think only real fans are the ones who's interested in buying physical copies of albums. Most people nowadays just download them illegaly. Plus there's a thousand ways on getting access to music, and it's taking a toll on music sales

Taylor has a huge teenage fanbase and Adele's album became a phenomenon and something everyone (including the people who buy albums) got into.

Music had been going strong for the past 60,000 years so it was due up to fall out of public favor. It had a good run.

It's crazy expensive. If you're a general music fan you will easily need to spend 30$ a month or more.

I just think most of the GP doesn't want to buy music when it's available for free. Even legally in some countries.

5 months & nearly 5.5 million copies worldwide, + her ratio in the US is much bigger than Gaga's.