Digital Music Overtakes CDs For The First Time
Physical music releases took another beating at the start of this year
NME reports that industry trade body BPI has released a new set of figures which say that in the first three months of 2012, £155.8m was spent on music in the UK, a 2.7 per cent year-on-year increase from 2011.
Sales of digital music, including downloads, paid-for subscriptions and ad-funded services such as Spotify, Napster, We7 and eMusic now account for 55.5 per cent of that total, with sales increasing by 23.6 per cent.
Revenue from physical formats, such as CDs and vinyl dropped by 15 per cent to just £69.3m, while sales of digital albums were up 22.7 per cent to £35.9m, outstripping music industry revenues from downloads of single tracks for a second successive quarter.