The UK music scene is celebrating a new milestone moment, with the Official Charts Company revealing that more than 1 billion songs have now been downloaded on our humble shores.
With the milestone figure having been hit yesterday, April 8, the Official Charts Company has announced that the 1 billionth UK song downloaded has come almost 10 years after legal music downloads were first introduced to British web users.
A figure that is expected to grow rapidly, the latest reports have suggested that a staggering 500,000 digital tracks are now downloaded every day in the UK. What’s more, showing the increasing reliance on digital content, 2012 music downloads were up 6 per cent on the previous year, hitting an annual download figure of 188.6m tracks.
"As fans increasingly download music on the move, tablets, smartphones and connected cars will drive another phase in digital music's expansion," Geoff Taylor, the Chief Executive of BPI stated.
Further highlighting the rise in prominence of digital music sales, an increase which has seen physical retailers struggle to survive, Martin Talbot, Managing Director of the Official Charts Company added: “The explosion in download sales over the past nine years means we are genuinely now living in the digital music age.”
With more than 3 million songs now being downloaded on a weekly basis, it is currently unclear exactly what the 1 billionth track to be downloaded in the UK was.
Whilst this landmark download is shrouded slightly in uncertainty, less hazy are the UK’s most popular downloads to date with Adele’s Someone Like You the most downloaded song ahead of Maroon 5’s Move Like Jagger and Gotye’s Somebody I Used to Know in third.
A collection of tracks easily recognisable even to those with less mainstream musical tastes, the UK’s 10 most downloaded songs of all time are:
1. Adele – Someone Like You
2. Maroon 5 ft. Christina Aguilera – Moves Like Jagger
3. Goyte ft. Kimbra – Somebody I Used to Know
4. Black Eyed Peas – I Gotta Feeling
5. Rihanna ft. Calvin Harris – We Found Love
6. King of Leon – Sex on Fire
7. Carly Rae Jepsen – Call Me Maybe
8. LMFAO – Party Rock Anthem
9. Bruno Mars – Just the Way You Are
10. Jessie J – Price Tag
News of the 1 billionth UK music download comes just week's after Apple revealed iTunes has now clocked up more than 25 billion song downloads to date, an accolade that went to “Monkey Drums” (Goksel Vancin Remix) by Chase Buch.
“We are grateful to our users whose passion for music over the past 10 years has made iTunes the number one music retailer in the world,” Apple’s Senior Vice President of Internet Software and Services said at the time. “Averaging over 15,000 songs downloaded per minute, the iTunes Store connects music fans with their favourite artists, including global sensations like Adele and Coldplay and new artists like The Lumineers, on a scale we never imagined possible.”
Via: BBC
