Adele, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry Claim Top-Selling Releases of 2011

Pop music has officially taken over the album and singles charts, with Adele, Lady Gaga and Katy Perry helping to lead the industry to a rare sales increase at the midway point of 2011.

Billboard released a report on sales figures through the end of June. Adele’s ’21′ is by far the best-selling album of the year, with 2.52 million copies sold, while Gaga’s ‘Born This Way’ holds down the No. 2 spot, with 1.54 million units moved.

MTV notes that Soundscan figures show that album sales actually rose 3.6 percent during the first half of the year, to 221.5 million, marking the first increase in sales since 2004. That’s good news for the industry, which has seen declining album sales for years due to increased online downloading of individual songs, legal and otherwise.

Still, Adele and Gaga are the only two artists whose albums have eclipsed 1 million in sales so far in 2011. Mumford & Sons’ rock album ‘Sigh No More’ ranks No. 3 with 982,000 sold, while country star Jason Aldean comes in fourth with ‘My Kinda Party.’
R&B and hip-hop acts also fare well, with Chris Brown‘s ‘F.A.M.E.’ at No. 7, Nicki Minaj‘s ‘Pink Friday’ at No. 9, Rihanna‘s ‘Loud’ at No. 11, Eminem‘s ‘Recovery’ at No. 16 and Wiz Khalifa‘s ‘Rolling Papers’ at No. 18.

Perry tops the list of digital songs, with 4.12 million sales of her song ‘E.T.’ featuring Kanye West. She also claims No. 10 with ‘Firework.’ Brown rates highly on the singles list, with ‘Look At Me Now’ coming in at No. 8 with 2.44 million purchases.