Adele Leads Record Industry to Sales Spike

After a decade of declining sales, Adele and Lady Gaga have led the record industry to the first increase in overall record sales since 2004.

According to data released by Nielsen SoundScan, total album sales have gone up by 1% in the first half of 2011 in comparison to the same period last year. It's a fairly minor change, but certainly a positive sign after years of double digit percentage drops.

Adele's "21" has been the year's biggest album to date, with over 2.5 million sold since it was released in late February. The disc has been a consistent best-seller -- it has spent 10 nonconsecutive weeks at Number One and has never ranked lower than Number Three on the albums chart.

It is also the year's best-selling digital album, with 992,000 copies sold to date, along with 4.1 million digital sales for the single "Rolling in the Deep." ("21" is expected to soon surpass Eminem's "Recovery" as the best-selling digital album in history.)

By comparison, Gaga's sales have been concentrated on a record-setting premiere week in which her latest record "Born This Way" sold 1.1 million copies.