Sales of digital albums soar year on year
Digital album sales in 2011 hit 21m, beating last year's total even before the traditional Christmas boom
Sales of digital albums for the year to date in the UK topped 21m copies in October, beating last year's total even before the traditional Christmas boom.
Digital downloads now account for more than a quarter of total album sales, up from 17.5% in 2010, as Britons' appetite for online music continues to defy a fall in overall music sales.
Coldplay's new release, Mylo Xyloto, broke the record for first week digital album sales last month, with more than 80,000 downloads, according to the Official Charts Company.
Digital sales of Mylo Xyloto, which accounted for 40% of total purchases last month, may have been boosted by Coldplay's decision to withhold the album from popular streaming services Spotify and Deezer.
Figures released by the Official Charts Company in October for the three months to the end of September showed that digital album sales were up 24.2% on the same period the previous year to 6.1m. However, the total market was down 11.4% year on year to 21.8m units sold.
Adele's hit 21, released in January, remains by some way the biggest-selling digital album of all time, selling almost 670,000 online copies to date – almost twice as many digital sales as Lady Gaga's The Fame in second place.
Geoff Taylor, the chief executive of UK music industry body the BPI, said weekly digital album sales could top 1m for the first time in the final seven days of 2011 with new releases due from Rihanna, Susan Boyle and last year's The X Factor finalists One Direction.
"It's encouraging to see such strong sales in the digital albums market before the Christmas gifting season gets properly under way," he said.
"For the last five consecutive years, the final week of the year has been the biggest in terms of digital album sales, as consumers spend digital music gift vouchers received at Christmas and try out legal digital music services on their new iPods, tablets and laptops.
"In the last week of 2010 digital album sales topped a record 800,000. This year we may see the 1m weekly sales barrier broken for the first time, despite the adverse impact of illegal sites and tough economic conditions."
The BPI is leading calls for the UK's largest internet provider, BT, to clamp down on illicit downloaders by blocking The Pirate Bay, one of the world's largest filesharing portals.
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