Friday 4 January 2013

UK Album downloads rose 15% in 2012

"A fifth successive record year for singles and strong performances from digital albums and streaming services demonstrated further consumer confidence in digital music formats in 2012, new Official Charts Company figures released today by the BPI confirmed.
British music fans streamed audio tracks more than 3.7 billion times during 2012, Official Charts Company figures showed for the first time, with Somebody That I Used To Know by Gotye ft Kimbra, Call Me Maybe by Carly Rae Jepsen and Titanium by David Guetta ft Sia the three most-streamed tracks of the year.   This is equivalent to 140 music streams for every household in the UK.
Digital album sales rose 14.8% to 30.5m, although sales of albums on CD declined 19.5% year-on-year to 69.4m in total.  Combined volume sales of digital and physical albums fell overall by 11.2% to 100.5m in 2012.
Digital album download volumes continued to show strong growth, with 16 albums selling more than 100,000 digital copies in 2012.  Despite the growth in digital formats, the CD remained popular with album buyers in 2012, accounting for more than two-thirds (69.1%) of total sales compared to a 30.4% share for digital albums and 0.4% for vinyl LPs.
It was another year of success for the UK singles market, with single track sales volumes continuing to break records for the fifth year in succession.  Total singles sales increased 6.0% to 188.6m in 2012, with the overwhelming majority (99.6%) accounted for by digital tracks and bundles. All the top 20 best-selling singles of 2012 sold more than 500,000 copies each.
The final week of 2012 proved to be the year’s record week for digital sales as consumers redeemed their Christmas music vouchers and downloaded more than 1.3m albums and 5.6m singles."

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