The success of Adele has pushed digital album sales to new records in the UK.
The music industry is changing each day. New formats mean new ways of production, new means of distribution. Simply put: the music world is not the same place it was even ten years ago.
Digital sales has been on the rise, but 2011 has seen fans really get to grips with digital distribution. The record breaking success of Adele has caused a ripple in record sales, with digital leading the way.
At this point last year, 7.1 million albums had been sold online. Now information from the Official Chart Company indicates that this record has been broken again, with 2011 posting more than 10 million sales (via The Guardian).
The cut off point came at only 169 days into 2011, with Adele naturally leading the way. By far the year’s most popular artist so far, the London singer has sold more than 600,000 digital albums.
’21’ is the bestseller, with the album becoming the first to reach the 500,000 mark in download sales. Currently sitting at 513,000 the album remains at number two on the British chart.
In all, four albums have sold more than 100,000 digital copies this year compared with just one in 2010. A grand total of thirteen releases have sold in-excess of 50,000 copies – almost double last year’s total.
In a statement Martin Talbot, managing director of the Official Charts Company said: “The sales of digital albums are growing which is good news for the industry but, for the moment, this is co-existing with physical sales”.
Talbot also insisted that the album format still had a future. “I think this is evidence that there is a market for digital albums and bundles of tracks. There were fears that no one would buy digital albums, but they do – and in growing numbers.”
