Americans buy more music online; Adele's 'Rolling in the Deep', downloaded 5.8 mln times

9 January 2012 · Updated 12 August 2026 · 2 min read

Americans prefer to shop online for music, rather than buying in traditional stores, according to data released by Nielsen SoundScan. For the first time, digital music sales were larger than physical sales, accounting for over half of all music purchases in 2011. Digital track sales set a new record, with 1.27 billion sales in 2011. This represented an increase of 100 million sales – or 8.4 percent on 2010. Adele's 'Rolling in the Deep' song sold 5.8 million downloads in one calendar year, while LMFAO's 'Party Rock Anthem' sold 5.5 million. More than 100 digital songs exceeded the 1 million sales threshold each during the year, for the first time in history. In 2011, eight different artists broke the 10 million digital track sales mark. The best sold album of 2011 was Adele's '21', with 5.8 million sales, the first time since 2004 when an album sold in more than 5 million copies during a year. The biggest selling group of 2011 was Lady Antebellum, with 2.1 million album sales. Rihanna became the biggest selling digital artist of all time, with digital songs sales exceeding 47.5 million. Around a third of the albums purchased in 2011 were sold through a digital service like iTunes, Amazon or eMusic, while 31 percent of alum purchases occurred at merchant outlets like WalMart, target. retail chain stores accounted for 20 percent of all album sales in 2011, while 7 percent happened at independent music stores. The top selling artists of 2011 were: