With record retailers and distributors flatlining, it may be a small wonder if able-bodied music-industry survivors voluntarily report back after the Christmas furlough. No consumers, no means of getting CDs into shops and no shops to put them in, mutter misanthropes. Woolworths is about to have its life support unplugged, the distribution companies EUK (owned by Woolies) and Pinnacle collapsed earlier this month, and the Zavvi chain has gone into administration.

Retail business over the holiday period, in both the physical and virtual high street, sent mixed messages. The singles market, so comprehensively X Factored at this time of year, had a marvellous time, with sales of 3m “units” — mainly on download, of course — representing an all-time high since the modern measurement system began in 1994.

Earlier in December, however, UK album sales fell to a 10-year low, and, despite the traditional festive upswing, were underperforming in the last full week before Christmas. Nevertheless, that meant more than 7m albums sold in a week, and 124m in 2008. That is about 5% down year on year, but the figure looks positively virile compared to like-for-like numbers in America, which are off by about 13%.

Special reason to be upbeat comes in another auspicious intake to start the new year. Twelve months ago, there was excitement about prospects such as Duffy, Adele, the Ting Tings and Glasvegas, none of whom disappointed their investors. Now we’re drooling over Florence and the Machine, Lady GaGa, Frankmusik and VV Brown. As with a Premier League acquisition in the January transfer window, where expectation doesn’t quite mask desperation, one can only wish them godspeed.

A London showcase by Duffy at the Pigalle Club last January felt like a convention of Universal executives with pound signs in their eyes. Their excitement was justified. Rockferry is the UK’s bestselling artist album of the year (although Take That’s The Circus is closing the gap) and has sold 4.25m copies worldwide, and counting.

Adele heard she’d be winning the inaugural Critics’ Choice award at the 2008 Brits before her debut album, 19, was even released. At the time, you wondered if the trophy would be shaped like an albatross, but the album went on to multi-platinum success and Adele, even now just a piffling 20, has four nominations for February’s Grammys. The second Critics’ Choice Brit will go to Florence and the Machine: no pressure, then.

Plenty of previous critical darlings had a rewarding year. Kings of Leon went poptastic, their fourth album, Only by the Night, selling its millionth copy just before the holidays; while they were always approved of by diehard fans and chin-stroking scribes, you now heard Sex on Fire and Use Somebody being hummed by shop assistants.

Teddy Thompson’s years of toil were rewarded with a top 10 appearance for the admirable album A Piece of What You Need; likewise Beth Rowley, for the effusive Little Dreamer. It was pleasing, too, to watch Fleet Foxes convert a forest of favourable press for the hymnal new Seattle sound of their self-titled debut into a gold certification for UK sales of more than 110,000 so far.

Of the top 10 bestselling artist albums, only five were released this year — the Duffy, Take That and Kings of Leon sets, joined by Coldplay and the Killers. We were still partial to three 2007 releases, by Leona Lewis, Rihanna and Scouting for Girls; one from 2006, our Amy’s Back to Black; and one from 2005, Nickelback’s All the Right Reasons, which was resuscitated by the indefatigably bombastic hit single Rockstar.

Just as last year’s sales standbys included antiquities such as the Eagles and Led Zeppelin, so 2008 tempted headbangers and air guitarists out of the woodwork. Never more so than in the autumn, when Metallica’s Death Magnetic was succeeded at No 1 on the European sales charts by AC/DC’s Black Ice, their first UK chart-topper in 28 years.

In the catalogue market, the industry thanked its lucky stars for Abba, both as the inspiration for the Mamma Mia! soundtrack and for their own Gold compilation, which has just gone 16 times platinum in the UK. Nor was there any less appetite for the venerable Now! That’s What I Call Music series. Its widely celebrated 25th anniversary saw it establish an all-time best first-week sales record of 383,000 copies for Now! 70 in the summer.

The classical cake was scoffed by crossover pin-ups such as Katherine Jenkins, Hayley Westenra and all manner of meticulously marketed monks, priests and choirs. Then there are the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards, who have made the bagpipes house-trained, if not actually sexy.

Pop’s new poster girl was Katy Perry, whose same-sex snogging experience was so fulfilling, she told us about it on every television show for three months. The wider evidence, however, was that R&B continues to be the new pop. Rihanna posted another remarkable year, three more hits taking her scorecard to 13 in three years. Beyoncé bared her soul all over the place, and on last week’s Christmas singles chart was climbing the Top 20 with three songs. But an era ended earlier this month for Madonna, whose Miles Away single ran out of puff at No 39, thus ending a sequence of 64 Top 20 UK hits in a row.

If the festive charts underlined once again that no other letter in the musical alphabet can compete with X, they also provided a playground for the world’s favourite 74-year-old monotone Canadian, a man called Leonard. Hallelujah to that.

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