Hey, didn't we do well? OK, didn't you do well? New figures released by the BPI yesterday showed that both digital sales and physical CD albums sales performed well in the UK in the first quarter of 2006.
Digital sales continued to grow, up 152% year on year, with legitimate download purchases aiding the revival of the once flagging singles market, and accounting for an increasingly large portion of that market. In fact downloads now account for 78% of all single sales, up from 44% a year ago, and 4% in 2004 - a trend which, of course, allowed that recent single from Gnarls Barkley to top the UK singles chart on download sales alone.
Commenting on the growth of digital, BPI Chairman Peter Jamieson told CMU: "With the announcement of the first download-only number one single last week and the inclusion of downloads in the albums chart this week, the UK record industry can declare that the first part of its mission is now complete. We thought it would take three years, but in just 30 months the UK record industry has transformed itself from one that was 100% focused on physical product to the most advanced digital music market in Europe."
Despite the growth in digital, physical CD sales were also up - with artist albums on something of a high - 27.9 million units sold in the first quarter, a record for the UK music industry. The hype surrounding certain artists, most notably Arctic Monkeys of course, coupled with sales peaks after the Brit Awards and just before Mothers Day all helped with that boom.
Music DVD sales were also up, by 33%. Some 1.5 million units were sold and in terms of trade value DVDs now generate more revenues than single sales. The big seller this quarter was James Blunt's DVD 'Chasing Time', though the 'Now That's What I Call A Music Quiz' DVD, a top seller in 2005, also continued to sell well. It's all classy stuff in the music DVD market.
However, overall album sales dropped by 3% because of the continued decline in compilation sales. If you think about it, it's kind of common sense that compilation CDs would be the first thing to crash and burn in the digital age - given that it is now so easy and relatively cheap to put together your own compilations via the legit download platforms. For the price of the average compilation album you can probably have yourself a 20 track digital collection that has none of the crap you always ended up with when buying traditional compilations. All of which means that, with the exception of those compos put together by respected DJs or producers, it's easy to see why the mainstream compilation may become a thing of the past. It would still be unfair to say compilation sales have completely collapsed - a significant number are still shifted - but I suspect it is the beginning of the end of the compilation sector.