Latest BPI data shows that American artists outsold home-grown acts here in the UK last year. It is the first time US music performed better than UK music for the best part of ten years. US artists, helped in the main by Justin Timberlake, Christina Aguilera, Norah Jones and OutKast, took 45.4% of total album sales. Despite Dido having the biggest selling album of the year, UK artists accounted for 42.3%. While UK artists performed better in singles sales (taking 47.2%), US artists also took a bigger bit of the singles pie that previous years, accounting for 34.6% of overall sales.
Other stats in the BPI figures show that Irish acts accounted for less albums sales the previous years - they were down to 2.7%. But good news for Russia who got one of there best ever scores, accounting for 1.4% of singles sales. All down to TaTu of course, but well done Russia.