/Digital Music Sales

Digital Music Sales

While the sales of music within the UK have recently hit the headlines as the amount of CD sales has continued to fall, digital music sales are quite a contrast as they continue to grow. CD sales have continued to decline year on year within the UK, this has lead to numerous businesses suffering from poor sales. The music giant retailer HMV has announced profit warnings as the business has continued to suffer due to the recent economic climate; other businesses have also expressed their concern at the declining CD sales.

Despite the drastic fall in CD sales, the amount of music sales online within the UK have reached an all time high, which has also seen the amount of money being spent on music downloads online exceeding £1 billion.

The professional body in charge of the UK record labels, the BPI, has sated this announcement and has confirmed that sales are still growing, with the £1 billion mark likely to beaten yet again this year.

Digital music sales have grown year on year since the introduction of different music services, including the introduction of iTunes from Apple in 2004. Since this launch, British citizens have spent, to date, £1,014 million on digital music in all its various forms. A large proportion of this amount, £316.5 million, was spent during the year of 2010. This shows just how popular digital music downloads are becoming.

The digital downloads of music now account for 17.5% of all albums sold throughout the UK, this is a number which is expected to grow in the coming years. Sales of single CDs have been on a rapid decrease over the last few years, the reason for this being that 98.7% of singles are now purchased in the form of a digital music download.

It will come as little surprise to many music fans to learn that the top selling digital album is 21 from Adele, this is followed by The Fame from Lady Gaga and this is followed by Only By The Night from the Kings of Leon.

It is expected that in the future all music sales will become download only, numerous record companies have already stated they will move towards download only in the next few years.