Go figure: More people would rather “rent” music by streaming it through a subscription service than buying it outright, either as a digital download or as one of those oldschool “CD” contraptions some people still use.

We joke, but the most recent numbers released by Nielsen SoundScan probably aren’t all that funny to the music industry. According to tracking service, U.S. music fans purchased a total of 257 million albums in 2014—just under half, or 106.5 million, were digital downloads. Sales of digital albums dropped nine percent, however, compared to figures from 2013. Sales of digital songs fell 12 percent, reaching just around 1.1 billion or so from the 1.26 billion sales in 2013.

Interestingly enough, sales of vinyl records—of all things—”were the highest since SoundScan started tracking sales in 1991″ notes the Wall Street Journal(Opens in a new window). That’s a pretty powerful statement for the 9.2 million sales of vinyl records in 2014. Just as impressive is the fact that vinyl sales in 2014 grew a whopping 52 percent from 2013’s figures.

As for what might be eating into digital downloads, it’s pretty easy to guess. As Nielsen SoundScan found, the number of songs played via streaming services grew a (similarly whopping) 54 percent between 2013 and 2014. That’s a jump from 106 billion songs in 2013 to 164 billion songs in 2014.

And, yet, Taylor Swift’s “1989” album—which the singer didn’t let onto any of the streaming services—sold 3.66 million copies, the most of any album this year. Swift herself was the center of a bit of controversy in 2014 for pulling all of her past albums from streaming service Spotify. And only Spotify, it seems, suffered the pop star’s wrath—her older albums can still be found on competing services like Rhapsody and Rdio.

“She sold more than 1.2 million copies of 1989 in the US in its first week, and that’s awesome. We hope she sells a lot more because she’s an exceptional artist producing great music,” wrote Spotify CEO Daniel Ek in a bit of a rebuttal blog post(Opens in a new window) this past November.

“In the old days, multiple artists sold multiple millions every year. That just doesn’t happen any more; people’s listening habits have changed – and they’re not going to change back. You can’t look at Spotify in isolation – even though Taylor can pull her music off Spotify (where we license and pay for every song we’ve ever played), her songs are all over services and sites like YouTube and Soundcloud, where people can listen all they want for free. To say nothing of the fans who will just turn back to pirate services like Grooveshark. And sure enough, if you looked at the top spot on The Pirate Bay last week, there was 1989…”

Touché.