Adele sells most albums in a year since 2004

Reuters reports: That Adele's 21 will rank as the year's top-selling album is no surprise, What is surprising is that 21, released by independent British label XL Recordings, sold more than 5 million copies.

To put Adele's sales figures in context, the more than 3.5 million physical albums she sold this year would have been good enough to take the top spot in each of the last three years without even adding in digital sales. Album sales include LPs, compact discs and digital albums.

"Adele's performance this year shows the demand for great original music," said Nielsen analyst David Bakula. "Here's an artist that had moderate success before, but nothing of this magnitude, and she's doing it all on two singles."

Amy Winehouse's death from alcohol poisoning in July also factored into Adele's sales performance. Bakula said the attention Winehouse's death received stoked interest among fans to sample other soulful, jazz-infused female British singer-songwriters, like Adele and Duffy. As a result, in addition to buying 21, consumers dipped into Adele's back catalog, making her prior release, 19, one of the year's top 25 best-sellers.

Still, Adele's sales total is less than half of the more than 11 million copies that No Strings Attached from N'Sync sold in 2000. That year marked the last time the top spot featured an album that sold in excess of 10 million, underscoring the dramatic impact that legitimate digital distribution channels like Apple's iTunes and illegal file-sharing sites such as Limewire have had on the music industry.

Indeed, music sales overall are expected to end 2011 up more than 3 percent from last year. Not coincidentally, the last time overall music sales rose by so much was in 2004 as well. The resurgence in sales is welcome news for the music industry. A meager 1 percent increase in digital sales last year created widespread panic that the format had already plateaued.

Digital sales are expected to end 2011 close to 10 percent higher. Physical albums still outsell digital albums by a 2:1 margin. But total music sales, which would include digital singles, are now split 50-50 between physical and digital.