Sundays is the day to download music.

[Mart!n]

Sunday has become the most important day of the week for singles sales thanks to the impact of downloading, according to new figures from the BPI.

In total, 95.3% of all singles sales in 2008 were digital, with Sunday the strongest day for downloading.

Some 17.6% of individual downloads throughout the year were made on Sunday, with Saturday second at 16.9%. Monday – traditionally a strong day for physical music sales – accounted for only 13.4% of tracks downloaded, behind Friday, with 14.1%. Wednesday was the slowest day, with 12.2% of sales.

Apple’s iTunes remains the dominant digital retailer in the UK, claiming a 71.8% unit share in the download singles market and a 6.2% share of album sales overall. New entrants and platforms, however, are making significant inroads, with music-based games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero accounting for 6% of all games sold last year.

The figures also reveal that just under one in 10 people in the UK now buy music digitally on a regular basis, almost doubling from 5.1% in 2007.

Digital is still dominated by males (64.8%) and those in their teens and twenties (59.1%). It has been suggested that the massive growth in digital over the past five years is about to plateau, but the findings show there is still growth potential among females and the over 40s.

Digital has also made a considerable impact on the albums market. Last year, 7.7% of all albums sold were digital, up from 4.5% in 2007 and 1.8% in 2006.

BPI chief executive Geoff Taylor notes, “The rapid growth of the digital market is clear evidence that British record companies have the business models in place to deliver music to fans online.

“The impressive fact that one pound in every 10 is earned online shows that labels are leading the way in the entertainment world in developing digital services.”

Source: MW

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Not sure where it be suited to post this, but it can be moved if needed.

[vastar iner]

May 26, 2009 10:27:56 GMT 1 Mart!n said:

“The impressive fact that one pound in every 10 is earned online shows that labels are leading the way in the entertainment world in developing digital services.”

/me hurts fists in beating the floor whilst rolling over and over laughing his head off

[Paul]

May 26, 2009 10:27:56 GMT 1 Mart!n said:

Apple’s iTunes remains the dominant digital retailer in the UK, claiming a 71.8% unit share in the download singles market

Is this the first 'official' iTunes market share figure we've seen?

[Earl Purple]

I think that iTunes going DRM free has helped them retain the market share over amazon. Although amazon's mp3s are typically 10p cheaper, their system is not as easy to use and especially if you lose connection when downloading it is known to be a huge problem to get to the files you have bought without contacting customer support.

In addition amazon imposes a stricter country control which stops people downloading from there when they are overseas unless they use proxy servers or something similar to circumvent. (Most won't).

tunetribe is my site of choice because they offer similar prices to amazon but you don't risk losing your downloads and the mp3s are 320kbps instead of amazon's 256 kbps VBR and whilst people have told me it's not just about the number of bits, I am still not convinced.

amazon has the better search feature in my opinion in that I can actually obtain a list of new releases filtered by price (thus getting singles only) and genre. However after finding them there I usually buy them from iTunes, even if they are 10p more.

I would like to see the other sites more competitive (i.e. getting a higher share) because it may drive down the prices on iTunes.

[Stewie]

I buy most of my songs on a Sunday, Saturday and Friday's

[Earl Purple]

I buy most of them on Mondays, but have been known to start the procedure on a Sunday. Rarely I will buy on a Tuesday (eg if Monday is a Jewish festival). Virtually never on any other day.

[Jamesdaniel88]

Good read. I tend to buy downloads on a Monday unless something grows on me throughout the week

[frag]

I guess people are likely to download songs on Sunday after hearing them on the chart show.

[ManicKangaroo]

That and its (usually) new release day, in the way that physical sales are best on a Monday

[AcerBen]

7digital need to sort out their search function out it's absolutely terrible. I've only been using it because of the free vouchers but I haven't been tempted to switch over to it from iTunes because it's so difficult to find anything. And not all new releases are on it either. I was looking for Agnes on Tuesday and Release Me wasn't on there. Dunno if it is now.

[Earl Purple]

A lot of the new releases do not appear on 7-digital until later. Some songs are released as download today and some tomorrow and there are also a few others on other days during the week eg Friday.

[ManicKangaroo]

Which is one of the main reasons that its so difficult to compile a download release schedule

[Earl Purple]

I would say what makes it hard to compile a download release schedule is you need one in advance, not retrospective, and where is your source?

[- C | N -]

I buy most songs directly after the Chart Show has finished as I often hear songs there for the first time and when I see the new Airplay Chart.
7digital is still my number one choice as I can't lose the feeling that there files sound the best.

[geriboy]

Hmmm, I wouldn't trust this Sunday best selling day figure - they would need to omit the X factor single (available to download the sunday of the final) to get a fair reflection as I'm guessing this has heavily biased the average number of sunday sales.

[frag]

May 29, 2009 23:35:03 GMT 1 AcerBen said:

7digital need to sort out their search function out it's absolutely terrible. I've only been using it because of the free vouchers but I haven't been tempted to switch over to it from iTunes because it's so difficult to find anything. And not all new releases are on it either. I was looking for Agnes on Tuesday and Release Me wasn't on there. Dunno if it is now.

Yeah, I've had trouble searching for the more obscure artists on 7Digital, especially when their name contains more than 1 word. If they appear in the drop-down box then it's OK - but even then, some artists have two different records for no apparent reason.

[daveyboy]

May 26, 2009 20:21:22 GMT 1 Paul said:

May 26, 2009 10:27:56 GMT 1 Mart!n said:

Apple’s iTunes remains the dominant digital retailer in the UK, claiming a 71.8% unit share in the download singles market

Is this the first 'official' iTunes market share figure we've seen?

Previous estimates have consistently put iTunes at around 80% so the others are finally starting to make significant inroads into their market share.

Genuine competition is good. Though I have the iTunes software, I've never downloaded one single track from them (only from 7Digital and one or two others)