Download effect impacts on sales.

Universal extends market leadership, as shares incorporate digital sales for first time

by Paul Williams

The digital age finally reached the world of record company market shares in quarter two, with download sales incorporated into the calculations for the first time.

But such sweeping changes merely further strengthened the status quo, as runaway leader Universal cashed in on its superior digital strength - now reflected in the market share figures - to claim its biggest share of the singles sector in a year.

The major captured 34.9% of the singles market in the second quarter, a figure notably boosted by its performance on downloads where the 2.4m individual and bundled unit sales it achieved over the three months secured it a 38.4% share of the digital singles market. It left closest rival Sony BMG a distant 15.3 percentage points behind on the overall leader board, the biggest gap between the two on singles since the merged entity started being included in the market shares at the end of 2004.

It has taken a year since digital sales were first counted towards the singles chart for them to now count towards market shares, because of the complications of matching sales to company ownership data. There is still work to do, with 1.2% of the singles market unaccounted for in the second quarter.

But whatever the methodology used, the end result sees Universal enjoying its biggest share of the singles market since quarter two 2005 and a greater slice of the albums business since the closing three months of 2004. On singles, its 34.9% share included control of half of the period's 10 biggest sellers, led by Infernal's From Paris To Berlin, which racked up more than 250,000 sales to finish second for the quarter, and Rihanna's fourth-placed SOS.