It’s looking like a royally good year for Lady Antebellum. At the half-way mark, the country act’s second album “Need You Now” is the top seller of 2010 so far, registering sales of more than 2, 355,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan. The album remains a strong seller and stands at No. 10 this week on the Billboard 200 23 weeks after its release.

The leading digital track is the all-star charity sing-along “Hope for Haiti,” according to Billboard, although it did not supply sales figures.

But neither was enough to halt the sales slide. Album sales in the U.S. dropped 8.2% for the first half of 2010 from the first six months of 2009 to 213.7 million units.

Track sales were also down from the corresponding time period. They fell only 0.2% for 597.4 million, but the message is much more daunting as, until recently, the music industry hoped that digital sales would save the business. Putting a positive spin on it, many pundits feel the drop may be a temporary reaction to iTunes’ increasing prices .30 cents to $1.29 to download hit songs.

In slightly brighter news, while physical album sales continued to drop (down 17.9%); digital album sales rose 12.7%. Physical CDs still account for around 60% of overall album sales, although that number continues to fall.