It’s been a bad year for music. Sure, there have been breakout artists and singles but, the sales are at an all time low. Numbers aside, the biggest clue should be that the number one selling album this year is the High School Musical soundtrack. No offense to Zac Effron and Ashley Tisdale; I own the movie; but I still find it a little odd for it to be the top CD of the year.

The numbers are a little surprising considering the huge breakthrough of the Fray, Rascal Flatts and Nickelback as well as the Dixie Chicks and Shakira. The success of the singles by these artists just proves that the large-scale success of a single does not equal the same success for an album.

According to Rolling Stone, sales hit rock bottom in July selling only 8.91 million the week of July 23rd. This statistic also included the fact that the number two CD in July was the worst selling CD to ever rank that high in the charts. Rolling Stone marked the CD, Los Lonely Boys’ Sacred, at 66,514 copies sold. Although July is usually a bad month for the record business; things are really bad.

There appears to be hope however, starting in August with the release of Christina Aguilera’s Back to Basics and Jessica Simpson’s A Public Affair as well as Idlewild by Outkast and Dashboard Confessional’s Dusk and Summer.

September might be the key though. With the long-awaited releases of Justin Timberlake and John Mayer coming out on the same day, September 12, it may be the week to turn the year’s sales around. As it gets closer to October the releases are only looking better including releases from Maroon 5, The Killers, Beyonce and Jay-Z’s new album is slated for Thanksgiving.

So, all you music lovers out there – get online or to the store and pick up some new music this fall before sales get so bad that music is hard to find and concert ticket prices get higher than ever before. Help support the artists you love by paying for their single on iTunes and not taking it from LimeWire. Who knows what will happen if things get worse?!

On a side note: What is going on with Jessica Simpson? She left her husband ten months ago and now she’s in a three month affair with John Mayer? I don’t think so. Somehow this little innocent Texas girl who wanted to wait until marriage to have sex and had a man nice enough to wait with her is not portraying the same nice girl image. Not to mention the fact that she gave John Mayer laryngitis and he had to cancel his hometown concert on August 26, which I was supposed to see. I don’t like this one bit, Nick Lachey was dumped he deserves a nice rebound but her, I’m not so sure she gets one and especially with John Mayer whose albums show how painful his last loves (i.e. Jennifer Love Hewitt) have been. But, that’s just my opinion.

On a second side note: Where is TomKat’s baby??