CD sales fall again; DVDs see first drop

U.S. consumers shied away from compact discs and digital video discs last year, and sales of Internet downloads failed to make up the difference.

Album sales fell 15% to 500.5 million units, market researcher Nielsen SoundScan reported Thursday. In 2006, total sales fell 4.9%.

The figures underscore the industry’s failure to combat music piracy with a campaign of lawsuits and threats. Although digital album sales rose 53% to 50 million units, they represented only 10% of the total.

The industry is counting on rising revenue from downloads and mobile phone ring tones to counter the loss of CD sales.

DVD sales fell 4.4% last year, to 1.09 billion from 1.14 billion, marking the first big year-over-year decline for the category since the format debuted in 1997, Adams Media Research said.