Adele and Lady Gaga help album sales bounce back in US

Image source, PA

Image caption, Adele has taken the UK and US by storm with her album 21

The decline in album sales in the US has slowed with sales up for the first time since 2004.

Although marginal, figures for the first six months of the year show total album sales were up 1% on the same period in 2010.

Adele has led the fight with the biggest-selling album of the year there so far. Her album 21 has sold more than 2,517,000 copies Stateside.

The London singer has also sold 314,000 copies of her debut album 19 in the US.

Joining Adele in the top five are albums by Lady Gaga, Mumford & Sons, Jason Aldean and Bruno Mars, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

However, on two separate occasions during the first week of its release Lady Gaga's second album Born This Way was priced at 99c (approximately 60p) by digital retailer Amazon.

More physical CDs were sold than downloads but digital sales were up by 19% compared to the same time last year.

In the US, download album sales still only account for one out of every three albums sold.