Napster launched in the UK on May 20th followed by the launch of ITMS UK on June 15th, which basically explains the rise in download sales. About 200 single titles are available for purchase in stores in the UK at any given time, whereas the figure for the online world is 40,000 titles as it appears downloaders prefer to purchase individual tracks rather than a full album. Despite these numbers, the traditional market is not being affected. In fact, whilst quite understandably, vinyl and cassette revenues have fallen, CD sales are on the rise with the UK album market showing a 3.7% market growth between Q2 2003 and Q2 2004. Single sales have shown a 6.4% rise over the same period. If you compare the 12 months to June 2003 with June 2004 album sales showed a rise of 3.3% to £1.11bn while the whole music market was up 3% to just over £1.22bn.
Single sales have shown a 19.4% drop to £60.5m, likely due to WH Smith ceasing sales of Singles in February 2004. £231.94m of recorded music was sold in Q2 2004, which is 4.1% increase compared to £221.88m in Q2 2003.
Sources:
The Register
Written by: James Delahunty @ 23 Aug 2004 13:48
