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The music industry is a lot like the Eastern Conference of the NBA or the National League in baseball. Somebody has to win the marketshare title, even if sales are down more than 16%.

At the six-month mark, UMGD was once again the class of the distribution division, as Doug Morris and company earn top honors with 31.3% of marketshare, a mere .1 off last year’s pace. Sony BMG was next with 22.6%, WMG at 15.9% and EMI the lone gainer, with a .6 percentage point gain over last year at 9.6%.

On the label side, Jimmy Iovine’s Interscope/A&M, with but a single album (Fergie) in the Top10, still dominated the new release category, thanks to strong performances from Robin Thicke (#14) and Gwen Stefani (#17). Warner Bros. (6.4%) was next, followed by Steve Barnett’s Team Columbia (5.5%), Clive Davis’ RCA Music Group (5.1%) and L.A. Reid’s Island Def Jam (4.7%) in the Top 5.

Aside from Interscope/A&M, which was up 1.8 percentage points over last year at this time, veteran exec Bruce Lundvall’s Blue Note Label Group was the other big winner, gaining 1.3 to finish at 1.9%, largely due to the success of Norah Jones, #2 among the Top 10 albums of the year at 1.4 million. Jones was one of only five albums to go over the million mark for the first six months, the others being chart-topping Daughtry (1.7 million), Akon (1.3 million), Linkin Park (1.1 million) and Carrie Underwood (1 million).

Warner Bros. and Columbia were also up from last year, both by .1 percentage points, along with Jason Flom’s Capitol Music Group (+.9), now comprising Capitol and Virgin Records, as well as Barry Weiss’ Zomba Label Group (+.6).

BMG and UMG each had three of the year’s Top 10 albums, with WMG and EMI sporting two apiece. The highest-ranking Sony album was Beyonce’s B’day at #16, along with the Dreamgirls soundtrack at #21.

For a full chart, click here.