Brits Doing Better In U.S.

British acts are doing better in the U.S. than in Britain, largely thanks to album sales of Susan Boyle and Sade and the singles success of Taio Cruz and Jay Sean.

The latest figures released by The BPI showed that in 2010 UK acts accounted for 9.8 percent of American album sales, up from 9.6 percent and their share of the singles market increased from 6.6 percent to 6.7 percent.

Britain remains the second-largest source of repertoire in the U.S. after homegrown U.S. artists.

BPI chief exec Geoff Taylor said music remains an area where Britain can be enormously proud of its international success.

“This is not just good for exports and our balance of payments, but also helps tourism and strengthens our reputation abroad,” he said. “Our increased share of the U.S. market is down to the extraordinary breadth of our native talent and the efforts made by UK labels in investing and promoting British music around the world. We must maintain our high levels of investment in talent at home if we are to continue this success abroad.”

Taio Cruz enjoyed a spectacular year in the U.S. singles market, selling more than 7 million tracks digitally during 2010.
Jay Sean also repeated his 2009 success with single-track sales of more than 2 million.

The other UK artist to break the 1 million barrier was La Roux, whose “Bulletproof” cracked the Top 10 in June and finished the year on 1.7 million sales.

Susan Boyle’s The Gift spearheaded the British album assault, repeating the stellar performance of her debut album I Dreamed A Dream, the second-biggest selling U.S. album of 2009. She’s the first solo artist to have two simultaneous UK and US No. 1 albums.

By the end of 2010, The Gift had sold more than 1.8 million copies in the U.S., making it the fifth biggest-selling U.S. album of the year.

Sade also fared well with her first album in 10 years, “Soldier Of Love,” which went straight to No.1 in America during February 2010, selling more than 500,000 copies in its first week.

Several British acts enjoyed breakthrough album success in the U.S. in 2010.

Mumford & Sons capped a great year by ending it with a Top 40 placing for debut album Sigh No More.

There was also breakthrough success for Florence & The Machine, whose Lungs also cracked the U.S. album Top 20 in September.