Taylor Swift, the darling of the pop world, released the top-selling album of 2009 and Michael Jackson was the top-selling artist, according to figures released yesterday by Nielsen-SoundScan.

Swift's "Fearless" sold just over 3.2 million units, barely topping British newcomer Susan Boyle's "I Dreamed a Dream" at 3.1 million.

Overall, Jackson, who died in June, sold more than 8.2 million units, nearly doubling Swift's total of 4.6 million (for her two albums).

The top-selling band of 2009 has been gone for four decades. The Beatles, on the strength of the remasters releases, were the biggest selling group with 3.3 million album sales.

It was the fifth straight year that music purchases exceeded 1.5 billion mark, and it slightly edged 2008.

Other facts from the data:

* Both digital and vinyl sales grew. Digital music accounted for 40 percent of all music purchases, up from 32 percent in 2008. Vinyl sales hit 2.5 million (compared to 1.88 million in 2008), the highest number since Nielsen SoundScan started in 1991. Digital album sales reached an all-time high with more than 76 million sales (20 percent of all album sales), up from 65 million in 2008. Flo Rida's "Right Round" song set a new one week sales record with 636,000 downloads.

* 2009 was the first year that a digital song broke the four million sales mark, and there were four of them: Black Eyed Peas' "Boom Boom Pow" (4.8 million) and "I Got A Feeling" (4.42 million), Lady Gaga's "Poker Face" (4.4. million) and Flo Rida's "Right Round" (4.1 million).

* Lady Gaga was the biggest selling digital artist with more than 15 million track sales.

In terms of the decade, Eminem was the biggest selling artist with more than 32 million album sales followed by The Beatles (30.2 million), Tim McGraw (24.8 million), Toby Keith (24.5 million) and Britney Spears (22.9 million).

The Beatles' "Beatles 1" album was the biggest-selling album of the decade with 11.6 million sales, followed by N 'Sync's "No Strings Attached" with 11.1 album sales.

Tim McGraw received the most airplay in the decade with more than 7.9 million spins at radio. Nickelback's "How You Remind Me" was the most played song at radio with more than 1.2 million spins.

Critics Andrew Druckenbrod and Scott Mervis talk about music on "The Beat," available exclusively at PG+, a members-only web site of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.