UK industry body the BPI has released its end-of-year sales figures for 2011, revealing that album sales fell 5.6% in volume to 113.2m units. Within that, digital album sales were up 26.6% to 26.6m, but CDs were down 12.6% to 86.2m. Meanwhile, total singles sales increased by 10% to 177.9m, with 99.3% of those being digital. The BPI has chosen to highlight the digital albums growth as the year’s highlight, while accepting that CD continues to account for 76.1% of album sales. Boss Geoff Taylor renewed his demands for the British government to move faster against piracy. “While other countries take positive steps to protect their creative sector, our government is taking too long to act on piracy, while weakening copyright to the benefit of US tech giants,” he said in a statement. Our With Teeth blog has some more analysis, pointing to the fact that these figures are only part of the story: D2C sales and streams are not included.
BPI reveals UK album sales decline in 2011
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January 3rd, 2012 by Music Ally
