From Good morning, Silicon Valley…

OK, maybe there’s something to this … what do they call it? … this downloading thing after all. The yuletide season proved a lucrative one for the recording industry. Driven by a plethora of iPods left under tree and menorah, legal downloads achieved a new record in the week between Christmas and New Year’s. According to Nielsen SoundScan, legal downloads nearly hit the 20 million mark in those seven days — almost three times the number of tracks downloaded in the same period the year before. That’s a phenomenal spike and one that suggests we’ve undergone a fundamental shift in the way we consume music. And indeed we have: NPD Group recently confirmed that MP3 player sales now exceed CD player sales in the U.S.