We’ve all read the reports that music sales for 2011 are up for the first time in seven years … digital track and digital album sales reach new highs … overall music sales break 1.6B mark for first time … Now see the numbers that back up these reports by downloading the Nielsen & Billboard 2011 Music Industry Report.

Click here to download the PDF.

Here is a sneak peak at some factoids you will find in the report:

• For the first time, total music purchases reached the 1.6 Billion mark for the year.
• Overall Album sales (including Albums and Track Equivalent Album sales) were up 3.2% compared to 2010.
• Total Album sales were up for the first time since 2004 (1.3%) with sales totaling 330.6 million compared to 326.2 million in 2010.
• There were 228 million physical album sales in 2011; a decline of 5% over 2010. This is significantly less than the 19% decline in 2010.
• During 2011 there were 76,875 new albums released that sold at least one copy, that’s up slightly from 2010 when there were just over 75,000 new albums released.
• Similar to a year ago, there were 11 albums that sold 1 million or more copies and 35 albums that sold 500,000 – 999,999 copies.
• While there were a number of album genres that had saw growth over the previous year, 3 smaller genres experienced double digital growth in 2011. Jazz, New Age and Electronic grew by 26%, 16% and 15% respectively.
• The genre that experienced the biggest decline for 2011 was Soundtracks; down nearly 20% over
• 2010.
• For the fourth consecutive year, more vinyl albums were purchased than any other year in the history of Nielsen SoundScan.