Nielsen released their 2014 year-end report today, highlighting how music was consumed over the last year. First, the bad news: Total album sales were down from 2013, with a dip of 11.2%, topping out at 257 million records bought either on CD, cassette, vinyl or digitally. Only four albums topped 1 million in sales, compared to 13 in 2013.

Track sales were down 12.5% as well from the previous year. But on-demand streaming continued to rise, with a 54.5% change from 2013. The total amount of audio streams was 163.9 billion,...