British Music Sales Declined for Seventh consecutive Year- in spite of Downloads

Combined physical as well as digital album sales fell by 5.6%.
LONDON - In spite of the great efforts of Coldplay and also Adele, the swelling popularity of the digital downloads along with a modest revival in vinyl, the music sales fell down for a consecutive seventh year this time.
According to latest figures that came from British Recorded Music Industry, collective sales of physical as well as digital albums declined overall by an average of 5.6 percent up to 113.2 million in the last year.
Although the sale of digital albums climbed 26.6 percent up to 26.6 million, still the growth could not balance the high drop in the albums sales on the compact disc that declined by almost 12.6 percent to 86.2 million.
The statistics limit yet another unstable year for the UK music industry that is under pressure to deal with a huge loss each year due to illegitimate downloads. Further, in the month of November, in debt record label EMI – Tinie Tempah, Coldplay and home to the Beatles – was broken and later sold to its ex- rivals, Sony and Universal Music for $4.1 billion.
Geoff Taylor, who is BPI’s chief executive, stated that reports of CD's demise were greatly exaggerated.
"British music fans understand that the album remains the richest way to connect with an artist's work," he told. "Digital developments capture headlines, but CD remains enormously popular among the people, accounting for almost three-quarters album sales.
"Physical ownership is important to many fans and the CD will be a key element of the market for years to come."