Album sales up as downloads surpass singles
UK album sales rose 2.3 percent in 2004 as the flamboyant disco rockers Scissor Sisters, who hail from the United States but made it big after signing with a UK record label, made an 11th-hour surge to finish at number one.
The record UK sales figure of 163.4 million albums, which comes a day after the announcement that U.S. album sales grew in 2004 for the first time in four years, highlights the resurgence of the music sector after a lengthy downturn in sales while illicit music downloads surged.
The physical singles market continued to decline, falling 14 percent, but the arrival of popular online music stores like iTunes resulted in a record 5.7 million downloaded singles. In the final week of the year, online singles outsold their traditional counterparts for the first time, the British Phonographic Industry trade group said on Friday.
Six of the top 10 and 13 of the top 20 albums came from artists signed in the UK, such as Keane and Robbie Williams.
Scissor Sisters, known for their disco remake of Pink Floyd's classic "Comfortably Numb," wound up a scant 582 copies ahead of Keane after a flurry of sales on New Year's Eve. The band signed with Universal Music's Polydor in the UK after they were unable to find a U.S. label, following in the footsteps of other U.S. expats like Blondie and Jimi Hendrix.
U2's "Vertigo" was the top-selling UK download, boosted by a high-profile partnership with Apple Computer's iTunes.
The top-selling single overall was the reworked Band Aid charity single "Do They Know It's Christmas".
(Source: reuters.co.uk)
