BPI 2011 stats: Market down, album sales fall 5.6% - but digital up 26.6%

2 January, 2012

 

 

2011 was a record year for singles and digital album sales - but neither could hide yet another annual decline in the overall UK recorded music market.

 

New Official Charts Company figures released by the BPI confirm that combined sales of digital and physical albums fell overall by 5.6% to 113.2m in 2011.

 

Digital album sales rose 26.6% to 26.6m, while sales of albums on CD declined 12.6% year-on-year to 86.2m in total.

 

The CD remains the favoured format for UK album buyers in 2011, accounting for 76.1% of total sales compared to a 23.5% market share for digital and 0.3% for vinyl.

 

Digital album downloads continued to grow, with 15 albums selling more than 100,000 digital copies in the year.

 

Sales of vinyl LPs rose by well over a third (43.7%) during 2011 to 337,000, their highest tally since 2005.

 

The UK singles market smashed all-time records for the fourth straight year in succession. Total singles sales increased 10.0% overall to 177.9m in 2011, 99.3% of which were sold as digital tracks and bundles.

 

1.1m CD singles were sold in 2011, representing just 0.6% of the total. All of the top 20 best-selling singles of 2011 sold more than 500,000 copies each.

 

As Music Week revealed last night, 1.0m albums and 5.7m singles were downloaded in the last week of 2011 alone – the biggest week ever for digital sales of both formats.

 

Discussing the numbers, Geoff Taylor, BPI Chief Executive, criticised the UK government's lack of action on piracy.

 

“British artists continue to produce incredible music that resonates at home and around the world," he said.

 

"But while other countries take positive steps to protect their creative sector, our Government is taking too long to act on piracy, while weakening copyright to the benefit of US tech giants. The UK has already fallen behind Germany as a music market. Unless decisive action is taken in 2012, investment in music could fall again – a creative crunch that will destroy jobs and mean the next Adele may not get her chance to shine on the world stage.”

 

2011 in numbers (Official Charts Company data)

 

ALBUMS

 

Total albums

 

2010 - 119.9m

 

2011 - 113.2m (-5.6%)

 

CD Albums

 

2010 - 98.5m

 

2011 - 86.2m (-12.6%)

 

Digital Albums

 

2010 - 21m

 

2011 - 26.6m (+26.6%)

 

SINGLES

 

Total Singles

 

2010 - 161.8m

 

2011 - 177.9m (+10%)

 

 

Digital

 

2010 - 158.6m

 

2011 - 175.1m (+10.4%)

 

CD

 

2010 - 1.9mm

 

2011 - 1.1m (-40.5%) :mellow: oops

 

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An article I just picked from Music Week

CD's are less popular every year, they will vanish for next 5-7 years

Thanks for posting this. :)

 

2011 - 1.1m (-40.5%) :mellow: oops

 

Matt Cardle and Little Mix are probably part of the reason for such a big drop.

And if you take away the charity/x-factor singles, the amount of physical singles would be even lower

Edited January 2, 201213 yr by Dannyboy

CD's are less popular every year, they will vanish for next 5-7 years

 

Vinyl hasn't...

CD's are less popular every year, they will vanish for next 5-7 years

 

 

They still have a market share of 76%.

 

CDs should never disappear. Its great to get a CD, an itunes voucher just doesn't cut it.

 

 

Does anyone think the music industry is crying too much? Yes, album sales are down, perhaps because the albums you're flogging aren't great or you aren't promoting the right ones? Single sales have gone through the roof, there is still an appetite for music and paying for it. The problem in on the production end. Look at the year end chart and you'll see that they aren't exactly catering to varied tastes. The biggest selling rock album was the Foos down at 22, yet there isn't another heavy band with similar crossover appeal. Why? People obviously like that sound.

Edited January 3, 201213 yr by Paramore

They still have a market share of 76%.

 

CDs should never disappear. Its great to get a CD, an itunes voucher just doesn't cut it.

 

CDs will disappear like cassettes did. Why should they maintain a format that suffers from year to year, labels should cut their prices from time to time to be able to sell them? Of course it's nice to have a CD in your hand but otherwise what's the advantage of it? If I buy a CD the first thing I do, is to copy the music to my PC, so it doesn't get lost, because CDs could be damaged very easily. If I want to take some music with me I use an iPod or a USB stick.

Yes CDs are beautiful but that's it. :teresa:

 

Of course CDs will stay long imo but only for very special editions and for collectors in the near future.

 

With an iTunes voucher people buy rather tracks not albums so atm it's not relevant for the albums.

 

 

CDs will disappear like cassettes did. Why should they maintain a format that suffers from year to year, labels should cut their prices from time to time to be able to sell them? Of course it's nice to have a CD in your hand but otherwise what's the advantage of it? If I buy a CD the first thing I do, is to copy the music to my PC, so it doesn't get lost, because CDs could be damaged very easily. If I want to take some music with me I use an iPod or a USB stick.

Yes CDs are beautiful but that's it. :teresa:

 

Of course CDs will stay long imo but only for very special editions and for collectors in the near future.

 

With an iTunes voucher people buy rather tracks not albums so atm it's not relevant for the albums.

 

I have only ever damaged one CD in my collection in 13 years and I was 11 at the time and played it to death. You say you copy your music so it doesn't get lost. Take away your CD hard copy, what if your computer dies, what if you lose your MP3 player? What if the files are corrupted? You are taking a much greater gamble with digital than you are with CD. Then of course there is the fact that digital remains 'near CD quality' sound but not quite.

 

Itunes vouchers are relevant here. We are talking about a world without CDs where albums would be 'gifted' through these vouchers. It remains a fact that people like things to be tangible. Look at the singles/albums CD difference. People don't care about the odd song to put on a portable device but if its a collection by an artist you love physical is the preferred way to go. Downloads remain a bit throwaway.

The worrying thing about the albums market is the extent to which Adele has hidden the scale of the decline. One in 25 albums bought in the UK last year was by Adele. Without those two albums sales would have been far worse.

Any vinyl figures?

 

Any vinyl figures?

From the article...

 

Sales of vinyl LPs rose by well over a third (43.7%) during 2011 to 337,000, their highest tally since 2005.

Sorry, I just read the summary at the bottom

 

CDs aren't going anywhere for the meantime because:

 

1. People still like the physical format

 

2. You can't convert vinyl to digital files

 

3. Tapes died out because they were a superseded by a format which did all the same things but better, the final nail in the coffin was the computer revolution as it meant that CDs were a viable medium to record a mixtape on and mixtapes were the only thing keeping the cassette alive. Digital isn't a direct successor to the CD so it's not going to completely die in the same way for a few years at least.

CDs will disappear like cassettes did. Why should they maintain a format that suffers from year to year, labels should cut their prices from time to time to be able to sell them? Of course it's nice to have a CD in your hand but otherwise what's the advantage of it? If I buy a CD the first thing I do, is to copy the music to my PC, so it doesn't get lost, because CDs could be damaged very easily. If I want to take some music with me I use an iPod or a USB stick.

Yes CDs are beautiful but that's it. :teresa:

 

Of course CDs will stay long imo but only for very special editions and for collectors in the near future.

 

With an iTunes voucher people buy rather tracks not albums so atm it's not relevant for the albums.

 

I would totally oppose anything which saw the withdrawal of the CD. Its far superior than just having a digital download anyday.

I also find cataloging functions of MP3 players are annoying. Going through every artist beginning with A, B, C etc... and often each artist only has one song in there. Its fine on media player on a PC because they are all at a glance and until they incorporate something like that onto a Hi Fi I will not be moved from my CD albums and Mix CDs

Edited January 3, 201213 yr by Paramore

I have only ever damaged one CD in my collection in 13 years and I was 11 at the time and played it to death. You say you copy your music so it doesn't get lost. Take away your CD hard copy, what if your computer dies, what if you lose your MP3 player? What if the files are corrupted? You are taking a much greater gamble with digital than you are with CD. Then of course there is the fact that digital remains 'near CD quality' sound but not quite.

 

Of course anything can be damaged, nothing works 100%. But for example if you buy a song on iTunes, and you loose it somehow, you can get it for free again with the same account. In the meantime now there are storages on the net where you could store your music collections (that's another quesiton if I would store them there).

Plus you must be stupid not to back up your mp3 player, hard disk to a back up disk. That's why I'm copying my CD to the PC, it's firstly a backup, secondly I never use the original CD in the car for example, because the CD player damages the CD so it's better to have a copy of it.

 

While people like things to have it in the hand this is changing. Just look at the newspapers. More and more people read the news now on the internet. Same happens with the music. Much more music are accessible through the internet and in 4-5 years not that many people will care about a CD or a "thing" to hold.

 

Of course it is another question if the "virtual world" is good or not but that's the future.

 

Itunes vouchers are relevant here. We are talking about a world without CDs where albums would be 'gifted' through these vouchers. It remains a fact that people like things to be tangible. Look at the singles/albums CD difference. People don't care about the odd song to put on a portable device but if its a collection by an artist you love physical is the preferred way to go. Downloads remain a bit throwaway.

 

iTunes vouchers are not relevant AT THE MOMENT if we are talking about albums. I wasn't talking about the future.

Before anyone thinks I'm against CDs, I'm not (well apart from the singles, these are now unnecessary formats, apart from some special offers). But you have to understand the point of the labels too.

 

There are less and less CDs to buy but not because the labels don't want to produce them. The demand for CDs are less and less so the labels try to stay profitable and produce less and less CDs. A lot of shops had to close because of that. Music is not just entertaining but also business (it may sound bad I know), and if something is not profitable it can make music shops and labels close down.

 

76% of the albums are still physicals. That sounds big, but if you check the numbers: 86 mio copies in 2011 that's 12% less than the previous year and who knows how many less than for example 5-10 years ago.

 

The theory that people like a tangible product is less and less true. There will always be a demand for it but the market have different signs. There are many factors: illegal download, the ever growing digital market and maybe also the recession.

 

PS: Ooops, that was a bit long, I hope you don't mind it :heehee: