White Plains, N.Y. - While overall U.S. music unit sales, which includes songs, albums, vinyl, music videos and ringtones, climbed 10.5% to 1.5 billion in 2008, total album sales -- including 10-song digital track groupings -- fell 8.5% to 428.4 million, according to a report from Nielsen SoundScan. Sales of physical albums like CDs fell 20%, to 362.6 million, and are off by 45% since 2000. Meanwhile, digital album sales were up 32% in 2008, to 65.8 million units, and digital track sales grew 27% to reach a record 1.07 billion.

Cupertino, Calif. - Hoping to deflect further questions about his health, Apple (NASD: AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs on Monday issued a statement addressing his continuing weight loss over the past several months. "Fortunately, after further testing, my doctors think they have found the cause -- a hormone imbalance that has been 'robbing' me of the proteins my body needs to be healthy. Sophisticated blood tests have confirmed this," wrote Jobs, adding that he has begun treating what he terms the "relatively simple" nutritional problem.

We want to take this opportunity to thank you all for your support during 2008 and wish you a happy and prosperous New Year! We will resume publishing our daily newsletter after the holidays on January 5th and preparations are already underway for eight exciting events during 2009! In the meantime, you can check out our website dmwmedia.com for updates, as usual. We look forward to continue to serve as your trusted source for digital media news, information, jobs and networking during these tumultuous times.

Jay on behalf of the DMW Team

Image by satosphere

With all of the focus on the economic downturn and the troubles in the retail sector, it’s easy to forget the continued growth of social networking in the UK. Christmas is traditionally the busiest time of year for social networks, and this festive season the sector achieved three significant new milestones.

Wired magazine just announced their picks for top 10 technology breakthroughs of 2008, a list which includes lots of cool stuff like flexible displays and Michael Phelps high-tech Speedos. However, their top two picks can be seen as somewhat controversial: #1. Apple's App Store and #2. Google’s Android. While Apple’s App Store certainly is an improved environment for third party developers (as compared to anything the traditional mobile operators currently offer), it still represents a “walled garden” school of thought. Google’s free, open source smartphone operating system is designed to work best with Google’s web-based email, contacts and calendar programs. While both products represent steps in the right direction, it can be argued that their two top picks are designed to benefit their creators more than the consumers…

I thought I had written our final blog post before Christmas, but I thought this data was too interesting not to share! As the chart below illustrates, last week traffic to E Cards websites was up 11.8% on the equivalent week last year.