UK Album Sales Fall Again, But Downloading is Up

Susan Boyle, Michael Jackson (pictured) and Lady Gaga all helped contribute to UK album sales in 2009, although overall sales fell for the fifth year running, the music industry trade organisation the BPI announced on Thursday (Jan.7).

Despite sales dropping last year to 128.9m from 2008's 133.6m, the trend for buying digital releases by UK consumers increased by a massive 56.1%, making up 16.1m of all full releases sold.

This news follows just a couple of weeks after the UK recorded its highest-ever singles sales for one week -- 4.22m tracks sold in the final week of 2009. This was attributed to healthy sales of MP3 players over the festive period. In fact, singles sales achieved a record 152m sold last year.

BPI chief executive Geoff Taylor told the BBC, "Despite difficult trading conditions and the ever-present competition from illegal downloading, UK music sales remained relatively resilient during 2009.

"While sales of physical CDs continue to trend downwards, music fans are clearly responding to the explosive growth of digital retailers and outlets selling and streaming music in the UK. 2009's record singles result is clearly encouraging."