The music industry might seem to be moving down with pirated music and illegal downloads but rap and hip hop albums are actually selling more. According to Billboard, althought it's not much, hip hop CDs sold 3% more (27.3 million) than they did the year before, making rap the ONLY GENRE to have an album-sales increase.
While its bump was not huge — just 3% — rap was the only genre to post an album-sales increase last year, scanning 27.3 million units, up from 26.4 million units in the prior year — and five straight years of declining sales, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Along with Eminem’s 3.415 million sales for the year, other big sellers in the genre include Drake’s “Thank Me Later” (1.27 million), Kanye West’s “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” (882,000), Nicki Minaj’s “Pink Friday” (852,000) and Lil Wayne’s “Rebirth” (710,000) and “I Am Not a Human Being” (664,000), according to Nielsen SoundScan. (Billboard)