Music, Digital | featured news

The paperback of “Fifty Shades of Grey” is exactly like the digital version except for this: If you hate the paperback, you can give it away or resell it. If you hate the e-book, you’re stuck with it.

The music industry, the first media business to be consumed by the digital revolution, said Tuesday that its global sales had risen last year for the first time since 1999, raising hopes that a long-sought recovery might have finally begun.

U.S. album sales rose more than 3 percent last year for the first gain since 2004 — a sign that rising digital sales are finally stemming the decade-long decline of compact discs. The uptick to 458 million album sales was helped by the hugely popular sophomore album "21" from British singer Adele, which sold 5.8 million, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Huge interest in Adele also led to the sales of 856,000 copies of "19," her debut album from 2008.