America's burgeoning love affair with the compact disk propelled the music business to a banner year in 1987, with sales of records, cassette tapes and compact disks totaling $5.57 billion. That figure _ based on suggested retail price, a somewhat inflated estimate _ was up 20 percent from $4.65 billion in 1986, the Recording Industry Association of America said Monday. The total number of disks sold also rose, in contrast to 1986 when sales of the high-priced disks pushed the dollar value up while unit sales declined, the association said. The total number of records, tapes and disks shipped rose 14 percent to 706.8 million last year, but that failed to top the all-time high unit sales of 726.2 million in 1978. Sales of compact disks, the high-quality, laser-read recordings now favored by audiophiles, soared 93 percent in 1987, to 102 million disks worth an estimated $1.6 billion. The number of cassette tapes sold rose 19 percent to 410 million tapes for an estimated $2.9 billion. Sales of record albums and extended play records dropped 15 percent to 107 million records, for an estimated $793 million. Singles sales were down 13 percent to 82 million units, or $228 million. A new format, the cassette ``single,'' which contains just one or two songs, accounted for 5 million units, or $14.3 million.
