tomm11

That makes sense. I'd also guess that the slide in iTunes share of the total music sales market is more than offset by the parallel rise in popularity Apple's subscription streaming service, which again isn't accounted for by iTunes, Amazon or Google download stats. Does anyone know what proportion of total 'sales' (as measured for the charts) are made up by streaming nowadays?

Annoyingly I can't seem to post this link. Sure you'll get round it! musicbusinessworldwide.com/amazon-sold-more-music-than-apple-in-the-uk-last-year/

You sure about that Ben? If you're right with that figure then Bieber is home and hosed. I understood Amazon and iTunes accounted for roughly the same share of the download market.

The Bieber tune is only number one on iTunes downloads. At Amazon, which is at least as big a portal, the NHS track is 1 & 2. I don't know how to calculate them combined but it's a lot closer than the kworb data implies.

Care to guess at this week's figure by Saturday, Eric? There was talk of 1.3m (in four days) last week - would you expect around double that this week under the circumstances?