NEW YORK, July 6 (UPI) -- Downloaded music sales are skyrocketing with 281 million individual tracks sold online in the first 26 weeks of 2006, said Nielsen SoundScan in New York.
Online sales of individual songs were up 77 percent over last year, Nielsen reported.
Album sales went down from 282.6 million to 270.6 million, but no one knows for sure if downloaded music purchases are cannibalizing albums sales, Daily Variety reported.
The major record labels are maintaining their positions, although market shares are shifting somewhat. Universal Music Group remains the leader with 34.8 percent of the market. BMG is up a bit to 26 percent, and Warner Music Group has increased its share by five percentage points to 18.5 percent so far this year.
The biggest sellers so far are Disney's "High School Musical," with 2.6 million sales and Rascal Flatts' "Me and My Gang" at just under 2 million.
Mary J. Blige's "Breakthrough" was at 1.5 million this year and Dixie Chicks' "Taking the Long Way Home" has sold 1.3 million.
None of those, however, came even close to last year's midpoint leader, 50 Cent's "The Massacre," which had sold 4 million copies by this point in 2005.
