Strong May Sales See Digital Albums Break Market Share Milestone For First Time

LONDON, UK (Top40 Charts/ BPI) - UK album sales recorded a 21.9% increase on the previous week as an attractive line-up of Dad-themed compilations and key artist albums underpinned gift sales in the run-up to Father's Day, figures released today by BPI and The Official Charts Company revealed.

Compilation sales alone were up 43.5% week-on-week, driven by targeted releases including the EMI / Universal treble-album Dad Rocks! and Universal's 60's-70's-80's themed triple-set Dad's Jukebox. Compilations from established 'father's favourites' such as Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band, George Harrison, Meat Loaf and Mike Oldfield helped raise overall artist sales 17.9% higher than the previous week.

BPI Chief Executive Geoff Taylor noted, 'This Father's Day boost to sales illustrates that the CD remains a great digital music product for which there is still strong demand, and which makes a perfectly priced gift for special occasions.'

This positive Father's Day albums showing follows hot on the heels of a strong results in the UK albums market during May 2009, led by three big releases from Eminem, Green Day and Bob Dylan, and by some good performances from key titles including Now 72 in the compilations market.

Sales of digital albums passed a key milestone in May 2009 when, for the first time, downloads accounted for more than 15% of overall sales. Five albums sold more than 10,000 copies digitally, with downloads of one of those - Lily Allen's It's Not Me, It's You - making up almost 20% of total sales.

Overall, sales of digital music in May 2009 showed an increase of more than 60% compared with the previous year.
Digital sales continued to power growth in the singles market - almost 11.2m tracks were downloaded during May 2009, 3.5m more per month than in May 2008.