Singles sales at highest level for six years

Source Music Week

 

Sales of singles are at their highest level for six years, according to statistics released today by the BPI.

 

A total of 16.7m singles were sold in the second quarter of 2006. On an annualised basis the market now stands at 58m units, the highest level since 2000.

 

Much of this was as a result of blooming download sales. Downloads now account for half of all single sales in the UK, with weekly download sales close to the 1m mark. UK consumers have downloaded 24.3m tracks in 2006, just 2m short of the entire total for last year (26.4m).

 

Artist albums also performed well, edging up 0.2% on the same period of last year. Artist albums have now recorded positive growth in six of the past seven quarters and the second quarter of 2006 had the largest second-quarter sales ever recorded.

 

The second quarter also saw digital albums count towards the chart for the first time, with more than 600,000 digital albums sold, almost 2% of the quarterly total.

 

While The Red Hot Chili Peppers' Stadium Arcadium was the biggest seller of the second quarter, British acts dominated the charts, claiming 52 of the top 100 albums in the quarter, including six of the top 10.

 

Compilation sales also fell again, although the rate of decline has slowed to mark the smallest decrease since the first quarter of 2004.

 

"The British record industry is providing music fans with a great range of new and exciting acts while the expanding digital music market is giving them an enormous choice as to where, when and how they buy their music," says BPI chairman Peter Jamieson.

 

"Record companies' enthusiastic embrace of new digital formats has helped the single find a new lease of life, and the British singles chart is more exciting than it has been for years."

 

The UK's Best-Selling Singles, Weeks 13-24, 2006

1 | CRAZY, GNARLS BARKLEY (WARNER MUSIC)

2 | FROM PARIS TO BERLIN, INFERNAL (UNIVERSAL)

3 | I WISH I WAS A PUNK ROCKER, SANDI THOM (SONY BMG)

4 | SOS, RIHANNA (UNIVERSAL)

5 | NO PROMISES, SHAYNE WARD (SONY BMG)

6 | MANEATER, NELLY FURTADO (UNIVERSAL)

7 | ONE, MARY J BLIGE & U2 (UNIVERSAL)

8 | NAIVE, KOOKS (EMI)

9 | SOMEBODY'S WATCHING ME, BEATFREAKZ (MINISTRY OF SOUND)

10 | CONTROL MYSELF, LL COOL J FT JENNIFER LOPEZ (UNIVERSAL)

 

The UK's Best-Selling Artist Albums, Weeks 13-24, 2006

1 | STADIUM ARCADIUM, RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS (WARNER MUSIC)

2 | SHAYNE WARD, SHAYNE WARD (SONY BMG)

3 | EYES OPEN, SNOW PATROL (UNIVERSAL)

4 | UNDER THE IRON SEA, KEANE (UNIVERSAL)

5 | INSIDE IN/ INSIDE OUT, KOOKS (EMI)

6 | ST ELSEWHERE, GNARLS BARKLEY (WARNER MUSIC)

7 | COLLECTED - THE BEST OF, MASSIVE ATTACK (EMI)

8 | IN BETWEEN DREAMS, JACK JOHNSON (UNIVERSAL)

9 | CORINNE BAILEY RAE, CORINNE BAILEY RAE (EMI)

10 | I'M NOT DEAD, PINK (SONY BMG)

OMG I'm shocked. :o

Surprised to see P!nk in the top 10 albums

 

Sales must be close to about 200,000 now?

How is Shayne Ward there? :unsure:

 

I thought he was at about 300k at the moment, so how come Keane aren't above him? :unsure:

It is thanks to the inclusion of downloads.

How is Shayne Ward there? :unsure:

 

I thought he was at about 300k at the moment, so how come Keane aren't above him? :unsure:

It's weeks 13-24. I assume as we're now in July we're on atleast week 26...

:o I never pink was in there :wub: :cheer:

Shayne is over 300k and this article is amazing news!

Shame its not impacting the YTD chart tho. Sales are still pretty weak on there :(

It's weeks 13-24. I assume as we're now in July we're on atleast week 26...

Ahhhh that's right, duh why didn't I think of that? :rolleyes:

 

Thanks Mark. ;)

Great news!

Cos you're thick Kelly eh? ^_^

This is just totally FIERCE. Shows the charts are far from dead :wub:

There's something that needs to be said about this.

 

Even though TOTAL sales have gone up, the sales of individual records, especially at the top of the charts, have not gone up significantly. The weekly sales figures for the number 1 record for example, is still significantly down on the weekly sales figures of number 1s in 2000.

it's a bit of a false picture though. Counting all downloaded tracks as singles just makes the market sound far healthier than what it is.

 

In reality, only about 40% of all download singles sales are eligible for the singles chart. There are about 600,000 chart eligible sales each week including physical sales, which is still amongst the lowest set of figures ever.

 

Sales at the top end of the chart, which are usually all that really matter are still quite low. The #1 used to account for about 8% of all singles sales. Now that figure is less than half of that on an average week.