Tough year for music

Make that a tough decade - virtually every standalone music retailer is gone. Last year U.S. sales fell almost 13 percent, though it would have been worse without Taylor Swift and Susan Boyle. Swift narrowly edged out Boyle in albums sold. But what about music sold online? Certainly, there's money to be made, but analysts say that none of those services are offsetting the losses from CDs. From the NYT:

Despite the success last year of new talents like Ms. Swift, Ms. Boyle and Lady Gaga, a number of albums by major artists fell short of expectations. U2's latest, "No Line on the Horizon" (Interscope), was released in February and has sold just over one million copies; in 2004 the band's previous record, "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb," sold nearly three times as many within two months. Albums last year by Mariah Carey, Shakira, R. Kelly, Leona Lewis, 50 Cent and Rihanna are also relative flops so far.

Taylor Swift