A follow-up piece by Reuters answers in part the question I asked in this piece below, namely, how much might digital downloads be offsetting declines in CD sales? The story states:

Nielsen SoundScan said overall music sales, which include albums, singles, music videos and digital tracks, jumped 22.7 percent to just over a billion units in 2005. The rise was fueled by a 194 percent increase in digital downloads.

Percentage increases often look large when the starting data point is small, so the 194% figure still may not represent that many tracks, but a 22.7% overall rise is better than a decline. As I said, I don't cry over declining media, but I want artists to prosper with continued sales of music. And Brian Ward agrees that brick-and-mortar stores are the most likely victims here.