Almost all single music tracks are now purchased digitally instead of in physical CD or vinyl formats in the UK. But digital album sales are falling as a result.

According to the latest chapter of Social Trends, on lifestyles and social participation, published today by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) digital sales – from online stores such as Apple's iTunes and Amazon MP3 – increased by 92 percent between 2007 and 2009 and now stand at 98 percent of all singles sold.

Overall, the volume of sales of singles has grown. In 2007 consumers purchased a total 87 million physical and digital singles: this increased by 76 percent to reach 153 million in 2009.

However, there has been a decrease of 7 percent in the total number of albums sold, from 145 million in 2007 to 135 million in 2009.

While there was an increase of 160 percent in the sale of digital albums between 2007 and 2009, digital sales are still much lower than for singles.



Digital accounted for just 12 percent of all album sales in 2009: 16 million sold digitally in 2009 compared to 119 million sold physically. The sales of albums in physical format dropped 14 per cent between 2007 and 2009.

Jen Beaumont ONS Social Trends Editor said: “These figures show that downloading is now overwhelmingly the most popular way for music fans to purchase songs. However, when buying a whole album, fans still clearly prefer to purchase a physical product.”

As well as music, the chapter also looks at book sales.

Between 2007 and 2009 UK publishers’ net unit sales fell by 6 per cent from 492 to 463 million units. However, total UK publisher’s sales of digital products are on the rise, reaching just over £150 million in 2009.

Overall, digital sales now represent around 4 to 5 percent of the combined physical and digital sales of UK publishers in 2009.

Between 2005/06 and 2009/10 there was a steady decrease in the proportion of adults aged 16 and over visiting a public library in England, from 48 percent to 39 per cent.

Overall the number of books issued by public libraries in England has fallen from 279 million in 2004/05 to 264 million in 2008/09.

There were 10 million active borrowers (those who visit the library for the purpose of borrowing books) using public libraries in England in 2008/09, a decline of 10 per cent from 2004/05.

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.c ... ID=3258318

'Filler' was a problem decades ago, never mind now

On the library front, I intend to make fuller use of mine

The labels realised filler was a problem years ago. They solved it by releasing compilation albums. Why do you think albums like Now That's What I call Music have been so successful. They eliminated the filler and gave the buyer the tracks that the public wanted. Itunes is a logical extension of that policy.

Maybe, but I'd be very surprised if NTWICM is as successful these days (for all sorts of reasons), and a band will struggle to stay together if it's living off a cut from single sales filtered by their record company

There used to be an extra £300 000 for the band from NTWICM release. I doubt that it has gone up that much. The labels make a bigger cut from downloads than from CD's. Though the artist probably gets less we think. The management get 15% or more. Then for a band that might be from each person. Also bands are kept in poverty by labels allowing them to get all diva. Look at the numbers of million selling artists going bust. Toni Braxton has just gone bust again.

Yes but it also means that she will be in Playboy soon.

Only two or three decent songs on an album is killing the lp, downloads have just highlighted this.