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Digital sales make inroads C
ANALYSIS DIGITAL ALBUMS
D lost more than 10 percentage points in the artist albums market in Q1 as digital claimed a record share of sales.
Twelve months earlier CD accounted for 77.7%
of all artist album sales during the quarter with around 17.2 million units sold this way. This dropped to just a 67.3% share in the first period of 2012 with sales falling in unit terms by 28.2% to 12.4 million albums, according to Official Charts Company data. Going the other way, downloads made up a
greater share of the artist albums market in the first three months than ever before with share rising year-on-year from 21.9% to 32.3%. Sales grew over this period by around 1.1 million units with 5.9 million artist albums sold in the quarter having been downloaded. The far bigger share of overall sales commanded
by digital is reflected by a number of albums whose digital share in the quarter was far greater than the overall market. Several of these titles were Sony ones subject to heavy discounting, including having a £3.95 price tag on iTunes. Among them was The Vaccines’ What Did You Expect From The Vaccines?, which was the quarter’s seventh-biggest digital artist album but only 24th across all formats and had 57.9% of its sales coming from downloads. There were similar big download shares from fellow Sony releases Torches by Foster The People (59.9%) and Kasabian’s Velociraptor (45.7%). Above-average download sales shares were also
experienced by Sony’s Whitney Houston album The Ultimate Collection, which reflects immediate online buying in the wake of her sudden death on February 11, and Island’s breakthrough act Ben Howard’s Every Kingdom, which achieved 61.4% of its Q1 sales digitally. It was the 17th top artist album digitally of the quarter, but 37th when all sales are considered. Within the Top 20 digital sellers of the quarter the album claiming the greatest download share is
TOP 20 DIGITAL ARTIST ALBUMS Q1 2012 POS ARTIST / TITLE / SALES Q1
01 LANA DEL REY BORN TO DIE 126,598
02 EMELI SANDE OUR VERSION OF EVENTS 108,097 03 ED SHEERAN + 101,995 04 ADELE 21 101,582
05 COLDPLAY MYLO XYLOTO 76,374 06 DAVID GUETTA NOTHING BUT THE BEAT 69,432
07 VACCINES WHAT DID YOU EXPECT FROM THE VACCINES 49,786 08 FLORENCE & THE MACHINE CEREMONIALS 47,360
09 NOEL GALLAGHER NOEL GALLAGHER'S HIGH FLYING BIRDS 43,932 10 MAVERICK SABRE LONELY ARE THE BRAVE 43,658 11 WHITNEY HOUSTON THE ULTIMATE COLLECTION 41,931 12 GOTYE MAKING MIRRORS 39,401
13 BRUNO MARS DOO-WOPS & HOOLIGANS 37,594 14 JESSIE J WHO YOU ARE 36,935
15 FOSTER THE PEOPLE TORCHES 36,040 16 BLACK KEYS EL CAMINO 35,862
17 BEN HOWARD EVERY KINGDOM 34,751 18 KASABIAN VELOCIRAPTOR 34,254 19 RIZZLE KICKS STEREO TYPICAL 33,551 20 SKRILLEX BANGARANG 31,942
DIGITAL ALBUM SALES FOR THE QUARTER
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
2007 2008 2009 Year Q1 2012 VINYL ALBUM SALES
120,000 150,000
30,000 60,000 90,000
0 2003 2004 2005 2006
2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 Year
Q1 2012 CD ALBUM SALES
5m 10m 15m 20m 25m 30m 35m 40m
0 2003 2004 2005 2006
2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 Year
Atlantic act Skrillex’s Bangarang which sold 31,942 units digitally but fewer than 7,000 physically. This gave it a digital share of 82.1% as the 20th top digital album of the quarter, although Bangarang ranked a more modest 62nd on the overall chart. Across all formats Polydor act Lana Del Rey’s
Born To Die was beaten by Adele’s 21 as the quarter’s top seller but it had the edge digitally. Del
LABEL / RECORD COMPANY / CORPORATE GROUP/ (DISTRIBUTOR) POLYDOR/POLYDOR/UNIVERSAL MUSIC (ARV)
VIRGIN/VIRGIN/EMI MUSIC (EMI)
ASYLUM/ATLANTIC RECORDS UK/WARNER MUSIC (ARV) XL RECORDINGS/XL RECORDINGS/XL BEGGARS (PIAS) PARLOPHONE/PARLOPHONE/EMI MUSIC (EMI) POSITIVA/VIRGIN/VIRGIN/EMI MUSIC (EMI) COLUMBIA/COLUMBIA LG/SONY MUSIC (ARV)
ISLAND/UNIVERSAL ISLAND/UNIVERSAL MUSIC (ARV) SOUR MASH/SOUR MASH (EMI)
MERCURY/MERCURY/UNIVERSAL MUSIC (ARV) ARISTA/RCA LABEL GROUP/SONY MUSIC (ARV)
ISLAND/UNIVERSAL ISLAND/UNIVERSAL MUSIC (ARV) ELEKTRA/ATLANTIC RECORDS UK/WARNER MUSIC (ARV) ISLAND/LAVA/UNIVERSAL ISLAND/UNIVERSAL MUSIC (ARV) COLUMBIA/COLUMBIA LABEL GROUP/SONY MUSIC (ARV) NONESUCH/WARNER BROS/WARNER MUSIC (ARV) ISLAND/UNIVERSAL ISLAND/UNIVERSAL MUSIC (ARV) COLUMBIA/COLUMBIA LABEL GROUP/SONY MUSIC (ARV) ISLAND/UNIVERSAL ISLAND/UNIVERSAL MUSIC (ARV) ATLANTIC/ATLANTIC RECORDS UK/WARNER MUSIC (ARV)
PEAK POS.
1 1 1 1 1 2 4 1 1 2 3 4 1 2
12 16 7 1 5
31 CUMULATIVE SALES
126,598 108,097 299,702 821,137 267,048 140,423 135,360 145,297 149,281 43,658 92,350 39,401
245,288 197,306 77,674 54,455 67,580
105,661 64,071 31,942
Physical 75.3% Digital 24.7%
Physical 78.1% Digital 21.9%
Physical 67.7% Digital 32.3%
2010 2011 2012
Q1 201219
Rey’s debut sold an unrivalled 126,598 digital copies, 35.7% of its overall total, to top the quarterly download chart with the Adele album finishing fourth. Only around a quarter of 21’s Q1 sales were downloads, a share well below the overall market. Finishing above Adele’s second album were two
debuts: Virgin act Emeli Sandé’s Our Version Of Events was second with a 30.8% download share, while 34.0% of the Q1 sales of Ed Sheeran’s Asylum/Atlantic album + occurred digitally as it finished as the third most downloaded album of the period. Helping to make it the quarter’s top seller overall, 21 was Q1’s top seller physically with 310,415 non-digital sales as Sandé finished second, Del Rey third and Sheeran fourth. The fifth biggest physical album was Military Wives’ Decca debut In My Dreams whose 150,738 sales in the quarter included a 94.4% CD share.
ARTIST ALBUM SALES BY FORMAT Q1 2012
ARTIST ALBUM SALES BY FORMAT Q1 2011
COMPILATION SALES BY FORMAT Q1 2012
COMPILATION SALES BY FORMAT Q1 2011
Physical 84.7% Digital 15.3%
Sales
Sales
Sales
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