I can splain that

Listening to: Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite, The Beatles

According to this article:

Total album sales plunged 15 percent in 2007, and retailers waited until October for the year's top release, California tenor Josh Groban's holiday-themed "Noel," according to sales data issued on Thursday by industry tracker Nielsen SoundScan.

Sales of physical and digital albums tumbled to 500.5 million units, as the music industry was pillaged by piracy and competition from other forms of entertainment like videogames, industry experts said.

It marked the lowest tally and the steepest decline since Nielsen began publishing estimates based on point-of-sales data in 1993, a spokeswoman said. The peak year in that time was 2000, when sales reached 785 million units.

Album sales on the Web rose 2.4 percent to 30.1 million units, but that was down from a 19 percent jump in 2006.

Overall sales — including albums, singles, and digital tracks — rose 14 percent to 1.4 billion units, also down from a 19 percent rise in 2006. The main driver of growth was a 45 percent jump in digital track sales to 844.2 million units. But even then, the pace slackened from 65 percent in 2006.

This is not that hard to figure out: Not only is downloading cheaper and less expensive, almost nobody is making good new music, so consumers are looking for the best deal. That's downloading, not CDs. And actually the vinyl is still cheaper than CDs, when you can get 'em.