UK digital album sales on the rise

June 25 2011

Source: MW

By Paul Williams

 

 

Annual downnloaded album sales are poised to break through the 20m barrier in the UK for the first time this year after reaching 10m units in record time.

 

The market last year hit another new high when 16.7m digital albums were sold, but this figure will be comfortably surpassed by the end of 2011, with sales presently around 39% up on 12 months ago.

 

According to Official Charts Company figures, 2011’s 10-millionth digital album was purchased at the beginning of last week, around two-and- half months earlier than when the same landmark was reached in 2010.

 

Even though the year is not quite yet at the half-way point, this is already more than the number of albums sold in the format across the whole of 2008 and, at present rates, 2011 numbers will overtake 2010’s total tally within the next four months.

 

XL act Adele has the year’s biggest-selling digital album with 21 - it is the only release in the format to have surpassed half-a-million sales this year - while by last week three other releases – Rihanna’s Loud, Bruno Mars’ Doo-Wops & Hooligans and Jessie J’s Who You Are – had sold more than 100,000 units digitally in 2011.

 

Year on year boost

 

Last year, it took until the last week of August for digital album sales to clock up 10m units in 2010, illustrating how quickly the sector has increased over the past year.

 

The number of album downloads bought legally in the first five-and-a-half months of this year is already more than what was sold during the whole of 2008, when 8.00m units were snapped up across the year, while 2011 sales should surpass 2009’s entire total of 12.75m units within the next month and a half.

 

“The continuing growth of album downloads underlines how the music market is evolving from a wholly physically-based business to a digital business,” said the Official Charts Company’s managing director Martin Talbot.

 

“A total of 10m album downloads in 169 days this year compares to 7.1m at the same point last year; that’s 59,000 digital albums a day on average, compared to 42,000 in the first six months of 2011.

 

By the end of last year, 16.7m digital albums had been sold in the UK; at that rate, the market total should soar beyond 20m sales by the end of this year.”

 

The big hike in digital album sales is a vital factor in why the overall market for artist albums is up on the year and total album sales are down by less than 1%.

 

While CD album sales had dropped 8.5% in the year so far up until last week, representing around 3.26m fewer units sold than at the same stage in 2010, 2.81m additional digital albums were purchased over the same timeframe.

 

Further helped by a growth in vinyl album sales, the entire albums, market, including compilations, is down a modest 0.9% year-on-year, while sales of artist titles are presently around 2.0% higher than they were 12 months ago.

 

UK digital album sales head towards US highs

 

Digital albums now account for more than one in every five albums sold in the UK, making up 22.1% of all album sales.

 

This compares to them having a 15.7% share of the market at this stage in 2010, 11.3% two years ago and 3.4% in 2007.

 

The UK still has some catching up to do with the US, where NielsenSoundScan Data shows downloads make up around one-third of all albums sold so far this year.

 

However, the growth in the UK market has been nothing short of stunning, especially considering just five years ago only around half-a-million downloaded albums had been sold in the first half of the year, while just one in 100 albums bought back then was not a physical product.

 

It is little shock to find that XL’s runaway Adele album 21 is by far the year’s highest-selling album digitally with its current download tally bigger than the entire digital albums market at this point in 2006.

 

Up until last week it had sold 513,863 units digitally, more than the combined sales of the year’s next four biggest digital sellers: Def Jam/Mercury’s Loud by Rihanna, Atlantic act Bruno Mars’ Doo-Wops & Hooligans, Island/Lava’s Jessie J album Who You Are and Mercury-signed Chase & Status’ No More Idols.

 

Among these albums, the Chase & Status release commands the biggest digital share, with 37.3% of its total sales made up of downloads, while only 20.2% of the Adele album’s sales have been achieved digitally.

 

Some other titles have even bigger digital shares, with 42.3% of the sales of Epic act Aloe Blacc’s Good Things accounted for by downloads and 45.5% of Kitsune signings Two Door Cinema Club’s Tourist History digital, while more than 60% of the sales revival of Warner’s self-titled first Tracy Chapman album following the exposure of Fast Car on Britain’s Got Talent is down to the digital market.

 

Up until last week it was the 40th biggest digital artist album of the year, but only the 116th top artist seller overall.

 

Digital-CD coexistence

Despite the big increase in the digital albums market, the Official Charts Company’s Talbot suggested the industry should prepare for digital albums to co-exist with physical albums for some time to come.

 

“Digital albums still only account for 22% of all albums sold – at this stage in the life-cycle of the digital single, physical sales had declined to less than 10%. In comparison, the CD album will be around for plenty of time to come,” he said.

 

The expansion of the download albums market is also having an impact on how overall album sales divide up between different types of retailers.

 

At this stage in 2010 specialist retailers commanded 51.9% of total album sales, but this has dropped to 48.3% a year later, while the supermarkets’ share has narrowed from 29.7% to 27.0% and the independents’ share is down slightly to 2.6%.

 

However, what the Official Charts Company describes as “digital web” retailers, led by iTunes, have seen their share of album sales grow over the past 12 months from 15.7% to 22.0%.

 

Digital albums sold over mobiles remain at less than one-tenth of a per cent of the market.

I will never buy an album digitially unless its not available on CD.

It surely can't be that long until digital sales surpass physical sales.

 

They should give out digital albums sales more often - 513,863 digital copies for 21, could go double platinum on download sales alone by the end of the year :o I assume it's the highest selling digital album of all time now?

I thought we were looking at a single digit % decline on albums again this year. Encouraged to see their actually up slightly and while digital sales are growing at an increasing rate and finally taking off, physical sales are holding fairly fast. Still love my physical, but I am running out of storage solutions which does make me wonder!

It surely can't be that long until digital sales surpass physical sales.

 

ISTM that may become the case in several year's time, at least on normal weeks, but in the run-up to Xmas, physical sales will surely still dominate.

ISTM that may become the case in several year's time, at least on normal weeks, but in the run-up to Xmas, physical sales will surely still dominate.

Agree, either that or the whole album market will fall through the floor if physical albums are completely phased out eventually, as it is not the same bying someone a digital album for Xmas - you can't wrap it for starters unless you burn it onto CD yourself and even then, you'd need a printer that could print images on CD's and do the album artwork for insert into a blank jewel case.