Albums boosted by download increases.

Artist album download increases spark optimism in nascent sector, with digital market share rising by 76% year-on-year

Digital's impressive year-on-year sales increases have been an established fixture of the singles market for several years, but that trend is now starting to be felt within the albums business as well.

At a time when the UK's overall albums market is in sharp decline - it is currently down 11.8% on the year up to last week - the digital albums business is bringing some much-needed positive news to the sector, with sales in January increasing in unit terms by 76.4% year-on- year to 716,921 units.

This represents more than 300,000 additional digital albums sold compared to the same month in 2007 and a threefold increase since April 2006 when 236,684 such albums were sold.

The huge sales increases are accompanied by digital bundles doubling their share of the overall albums market over the past year.

While this time last year digital albums typically accounted for around 3% of the total sold each week, in the past four weeks they have respectively claimed 6.5%, 6.4%, 6.3% and 5.2% of the market.

The strong January sales leap follows unit sales rising on the year in December by around 63%, prompting the Official Charts Company managing director Martin Talbot to suggest there are very positive signs the digital albums market is really starting to take off.