In case you haven’t caught on to recent technology trends, the internet is the place to be. Practically everything can be done or purchased online, and today’s big news confirms what we saw coming for a while…

the death of the record industry.

Reportedly, Itunes is now the number one music provider, surpassing the incumbent Wal-Mart who used to be the biggest music seller in America.

Album sales have been suffering ever since the Napster boom. After downloading for free became illegal, the next best thing was Itunes, where you could purchase a song for $0.99. After all, who would spend $12.00 on the entire album, “The Dutchess,” when “Glamourous” is clearly the only good song? Thanks to services like Itunes, we have the option of picking and choosing the songs we buy, instead of having to suffer through “Fergalicious” and “London Bridge.”

Apple claims that Itunes has sold over four billion songs since it began five years ago. That doesn’t even encompass the movies, podcasts and audiobooks that have also become available in recent years.

What are the implications for the declining record industry? We’re not sure, but it’s not looking good. As long as we have the choice of purchasing what we like one song at a time, it’s going to be more and more difficult to sell music in album form.