U.K. Digital Sales Double

Digital music sales doubled in 2008 but it wasn’t enough to stop the recorded music market from shrinking 6 percent.

British Phonographic Industry figures published in its annual statistical handbook May 18 show 9.5 percent of the population bought music digitally in 2008, up from 5.1 percent in 2007.

BPI chief exec Geoff Taylor held up the rapid growth of the digital market as clear evidence that the British record companies have the business models in place to deliver music to fans online.

Although nearly 10 percent buys music online, a recent BPI survey showed 23 percent of people between the ages of 16 to 54 use file-sharing networks to obtain music illegally, with two-thirds doing so on a monthly basis. One-third of the population now owns an MP3 player.

Digital Stores, which has just re-launched its business-to-business site digitalstores.co.uk, has posted a 68 percent climb in revenues to £5.6 million and a £125,000 profit for the year ending March 31.

At the same time, the tough economic climate has squeezed the retail music market by 6 percent and already claimed key High Street chains such as Woolworths and Zavvi, leaving HMV as market leader with 24.1 percent.

Tesco is the biggest supermarket, with a 10.5 percent share of the music market, while iTunes is the top online retailer with 5.7 percent. Overall, singles sales were up by 33 percent but album sales were down by 3.2 percent.

New albums by Coldplay, Kings of Leon and Duffy sold more than 100,000 digital copies.

About 110 million single tracks were downloaded in 2008, a 42 percent increase from 2007.

Leona Lewis had the biggest selling download and most-played track in America with “Bleeding Love” and Duffy’s “Mercy” was the most-played track in Europe. The BPI added that “Mamma Mia!” was the first soundtrack to sell 1 million in a year since “The Bodyguard” in 1993.

Rock was still the dominant genre in the albums market in 2008 – accounting for 35.7 percent of sales – but pop gained ground, increasing its share from 22.3 percent to 25.3 percent.

Video games such as “Rock Band” and “Guitar Hero” are a fast-growing genre, accounting for 6 percent of all games sales on the leading consoles in 2008. More than 4 million games were sold at a combined retail value of £108 million.