James Delahunty
11 Jul 2005 18:21
So far in 2005, there have been almost double the amount of legal downloads in the UK than in the entire of 2004 according to the British Phonographic Industry (BPI). So far, 10 million songs have been downloaded from legal services in the UK such as iTunes or Napster. The number of downloads has seriously boosted the overall singles sales, but surprisingly, sales of seven-inch vinyl singles were also up 87.3% on last year.
The BPI is delighted with the downloading results, which are pushing single sales, but still not over-hyping downloads just yet. "Despite the incredible growth in download sales it would be wrong to write-off physical formats just yet." BPI chairman Peter Jamieson said. 5.7 million Songs were legally downloaded in the UK in the entire of 2004.
The BPI now says it is beginning to see good results from this resource which is was forced to setup due to massive amounts of illegal music filesharing on legal P2P services like Kazaa or the eDonkey2000 network. "The record industry has enthusiastically embraced the new legal download services since their emergence in the mainstream little more than a year ago, and now we're beginning to reap the rewards," Mr Jamieson said.
"The battle against illegal filesharing will continue, but we are delighted to have hit this milestone so soon," he continued. Overall there has been a 52.4% improvement in single sales, with 1.4 million seven-inch singles sold.
Source:
BBC News