Taylor Swift, Lil Wayne led music sales in 2008

The record industry's sales may still be shrinking, but someone has to land at the top of the list.

Now that some of the records likely to be big hits for 2009 are for sale in stores/online or on their way ("The Ballads," Mariah Carey, out now; "Tonight: Franz Ferdinand," Franz Ferdinand, out Tuesday; "The Fray (Deluxe)," The Fray, Feb. 3; "No Line on the Horizon," U2, March 3; "All I Ever Wanted," Kelly Clarkson, March 17) we should take the time to look back at how things ended up last year.

The sales leaders were teenage country sweetheart Taylor Swift and rapper Lil Wayne, with Swift getting the crown as the year's top-selling artist and Lil Wayne claiming the biggest-selling album in Nielsen SoundScan's year-end U.S. music sales report.

Swift, 19, sold slightly more than 4 million albums from Dec. 31, 2007, through Dec. 28, 2008, between her new "Fearless" CD and continued popularity of her 2006 debut "Taylor Swift."

"Tha Carter III" logged sales of almost 2.9 million copies during the same period, followed in the Top 5 by Coldplay's "Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends" (2.14 million); Swift's "Fearless" (2.11 million); Kid Rock's "Rock N Roll Jesus" (2 million); and AC/DC's "Black Ice" (1.9 million).

Swift is the only act with two of the Top 10 sellers, her debut finishing at No. 6 with sales during the year of nearly 1.6 million copies.

The fact that only four albums sold 2 million or more copies during the year reflected the continuing erosion of album sales, which were down 8.5 percent compared with 2007.

Behind Swift among the year's biggest album sellers are AC/DC (3.42 million); Lil Wayne (3.38 million); Coldplay (2.7 million); and Metallica (2.5 million).

In the digital realm, 20-year-old pop singer Rihanna was the top-selling act, posting sales of 9.9 million digital tracks during the year. Swift came in at No. 2 with 8.8 million.

The top-selling digital track of 2008 was Leona Lewis' "Bleeding Love," with sales of 2.3 million tracks.

Sales of digital tracks topped the 1 billion mark for the first time, up 27 percent over 2007's total of 844 million. Digital album sales also were up to 65 million last year, an increase of 32 percent over the 50 million digital albums sold in 2007.