Eminem performs in New York on Sept. 13, 2010. His album Recovery was 2010's top-selling album. (Jason DeCrow/Associated Press)

U.S. sales of music albums fell 12.8 per cent in 2010 as illegal downloading and the move away from CDs continued to cut into music sales.

Eminem's Recovery was the year's top seller, with sales of 3.4 million albums.

But consumers appeared to have turned away from buying all kinds of music, with even back catalogue albums falling out of favour. There were only 11 albums that sold more than one million copies, compared to 22 in 2009.

A total of 373.9 million albums sold in 2009, compared with 326.2 million in 2010, with digital sales failing to make up the difference.

Digital album downloads now account for more than a quarter of all sales, according to figures from Nielsen SoundScan. They were up 13 per cent to 86.3 million units compared with 2009.

Growth in sales of individual tracks slowed to just one per cent in 2010, with sales at 1.17 billion units.

Only five tracks sold over four million units, with the top seller Katy Perry's California Gurls.

Overall music unit sales — which count each sale of an album, digital track and music video as one unit — fell 2.4 per cent to 1.51 billion units, Nielsen SoundScan reported.

The bad news for the American music industry follows a report from BMI in Britain that U.K. music sales fell seven per cent.

Digital and physical album sales in Britain reached 119.9 million in 2010, down seven per cent from 128.9 million in 2009.