The Nielsen Company Soundscan report for 2008 shows some interesting statistics. Legitimate digital sales continue to climb with some truly astonishing numbers.

• Music purchases (transactions) in 2008 reached 1.5 Billion, marking the fourth consecutive year music sales have exceeded 1 billion; 1.4 billion (2007) vs. 1.2 billion (2006) vs. 1 billion (2005).

• Overall Album sales (including Albums and Track Equivalent Album sales) declined 8.5% compared to 2007.

• Total Album sales declined 14% compared to 2007.

• Metallica’s “Death Magnetic” is the best selling Internet album for the year with 144,000 sales.

• During 2008, more Vinyl Albums were purchased (1.88 million) than any other year. The previous record was in 2000, with 1.5 million LP album sales.

• Digital Track sales break the 1 BILLION sales mark for the first time with more than 1,070,000 digital track sales. The previous record was 844 million digital track purchases during 2007; an increase of 27% over 2007.

• Digital Album sales reached an all-time high with more than 65 million sales in 2008; up from 50 million in 2007; an increase of 32% over the previous year.

• Digital album sales account for 15% of total album sales compared to 10% in 2007 and 5.5% in 2006.

• 2008 is the first time a digital song broke the 3 million sales mark in a single year. Leona Lewis’ “Bleeding Love” and Lil Wayne’s “Lollipop.

• In 2008, there are 19 different digital songs with sales that exceeded 2 million compared to 9 in 2007.

• 71 Digital Songs exceed the 1 million sales mark for the year compared to 41 digital songs in 2007, 22 in 2006, and only 2 digital songs in 2005.

• Rihanna is the biggest selling digital artist in 2008 with nearly 10 million track sales compared to Fergie in 2007 who had 7.5 million track sales.

• There are more than 450,000 different physical albums that sold at least one copy over the Internet during 2008 compared to 390,000 in 2007. More long tail support.