"Tha Carter III," rapper Lil Wayne [ tickets ]'s latest, sold almost 3 million copies last year---the operative word being "almost"---making it the best-selling album of 2008.

With total sales of 2.88 million copies, "Tha Carter III"'s ascension to the top of the year-end sales chart is significant primarily because it marks the first time since Nielsen SoundScan began tracking sales in 1991 that the best-selling album of a calendar year has moved less than 3 million copies, according to Billboard.

Coldplay [ tickets ]'s "Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends" racked up 2008's second-highest sales total, and claims the No. 2 spot on the year-end list after selling 2.15 million copies.

Cumulatively, country singer Taylor Swift [ tickets ] was the year's biggest winner, with her recently released album, "Fearless," landing at No. 3 for the year with sales of 2.11 million copies, and her 2006 self-titled debut laying claim to the No. 6 slot with sales of 1.6 million copies.

Kid Rock [ tickets ]'s "Rock N Roll Jesus" sold just over 2 million copies to land in the No. 4 slot on the year-end list, while AC/DC's "Black Ice" showed some muscle by taking the No. 5 slot with sales of about 1.92 million despite its exclusive distribution via Wal-Mart; both of the aforementioned albums were not sold in digital form, leaving a full-album purchase as the only legal means of acquiring a particular song.

Rounding out 2008's Top 10 best-selling albums are Metallica [ tickets ]'s "Death Magnetic" at No. 7 with 1.57 million, T.I. [ tickets ]'s "Paper Trail" at No. 8 with 1.52 million, Jack Johnson [ tickets ]'s "Sleep Through the Static" at No. 9 with 1.5 million and Beyonce [ tickets ]'s "I Am ... Sasha Fierce" at No. 10 with 1.46 million.

Total album sales for 2008 clocked in at 428.4 million, a 14.4% drop-off from 2007's total, 500.5 million.

Digital-album sales continued to gain ground on physical CDs, with sales of 65.8 million downloads accounting for about 15.4% of all albums sold during 2008, up significantly from the 50 million digital albums sold in 2007, which comprised 10% of that year's overall sales total. CDs, meanwhile, represented 84% of all album sales in 2008 with 360.6 million, down from 90% (449.19 million) in 2007.

Of course, digital music's most notable growth came in the form of individual-song sales, which for the first time crested the 1 billion mark, setting a Nielsen SoundScan record with 1.07 billion digital tracks sold in 2008. That number is up 27% from 2007's digital-track sales, which totaled 844.2 million.

Coldplay's "Viva La Vida" was 2008's best-selling digital album, and Leona Lewis' "Bleeding Love" was the year's best-selling digital track, according to Nielsen SoundScan's year-end data.

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