Record Breaking Digital Sales in 2008

In 2008, music single tracks sold 33% more than albums due to the increasing tendency towards online download sales and a fantastic 2008 release schedule. Young music fans have steered away from illegal downloads, and are progressively buying more songs online according to the BPI.

With 115 million tracks sold, big-selling releases by artists including Leona Lewis, Coldplay, the Killers and Take That helped the industry make record sales last year. Digital retailers and online stores have boomed with easy interfaces and mobile capability, and the future of the online music business is becoming more obvious. Cheaper is better.

Even though UK album sales fell by 3.2%, the digital albums market grew 65%, 10 million sold, in comparison to 2007. Usage of Apple’s music distribution is on the rise, and users will be happy to know that Apple announced on Tuesday that it would remove anti-piracy protection software (DRM) on all of the songs in its iTunes Store.

This means buyers will be able to copy songs to their different devices as many times as they want.

It’s this kind of industry-shifting decision that breaks sales records and rewards the customer, instead of the DRM restraints. The 4 major labels have struck a deal with Apple, which allows the companies to set their own range of prices instead of the usual 99 cents that Apple had stipulated. Songs will now be available for 69 cents, 99 cents and $1.29 — with less popular songs priced at 69 cents and more popular ones at $1.29.

This tendency has already had a big impact on the US market, which also had slow album sales in 2008, but reached record digital track sales, which grew 27% to reach 1.07 billion units.

Perhaps 2009 will be a landmark year, with a complete overhaul of the music industry and its relationship with fans.

Source: BBC, Times, NME