Music sales during the Christmas shopping season were down an astounding 21% from last year.

From the week of Thanksgiving up through the day before Christmas Eve, 83.9 million albums were sold, a decrease of 21.38 million from 2006’s 105.28 million.

Still, plenty of people love celebrating Christmas and Josh Groban was immune from the slump. Groban’s “Noel” has crossed 3.5 million in sales to become the top-selling disc of the year and claimed its fifth straight week at No. 1. (Variety)

Warner Ends Struggle and Partners With Amazon: Warner Music who held out on selling music online without copy protection, caved in and began selling music on Amazon in the MP3 format without the digital rights management. (Wired)